Waste Not Want Not Cookies

I love making novelty cakes but hate the waste of the scraps of cake that are leftover from trimming the cake. When I made my green gourmet giraffe cake recently, I had quite a lot of cake over. I didn't want to eat it but couldn't bear to throw it out. So I searched the net and found a page of cake crumb recipes.

So in the interests of research I decided to make some choc chip cookies with crumbs from the leftover cake. It felt like that moment in primary school art class when you have finished with your paints and so you just mix them altogether and often find that they make a brownish grayish slurry and the colours are better alone than together. It is silly but it is also fun. Yes, after all the work on my gorgeous giraffe cake, I delighted in this little experiment which ended up producing unattractive little blobs.

Unsurprisingly these cookies are very cakey. They are soft little bundles rather than buttery, chewy or flat. But I think that the addition of oatmeal, spices and choc chips have pepped up the leftover cake crumbs. I have dozens in my freezer which will be work snacks for weeks to come. They are not my favourite choc chip cookies but they are a fine way to treat old cake crumbs.

Cake Crumb Cookies
(Adapted from Sharon Briggs’ recipe on Erlene’s Cakes)
Makes 7 dozen

2 eggs
1 cup milk
5-7 cups cake crumbs (I used 5)*
⅔ cup brown sugar
½ cup melted margarine or butter
1 tsp vanilla
1¾ cups plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp salt
Pinch each of ground cardamom and ground ginger
2 cups oatmeal
1 generous cup choc chips (or walnuts)

* Use a coarse grater to make cake crumbs out of leftover cakes. The cakes I used had been stored in a plastic bag for about a week so I don’t think they need to be fresh. I guess that the quality of the cookies probably depends a lot on the quality of your cakes!

Beat eggs and milk together. Add cake crumbs and set aside for 15 minutes. Stir sugar, melted butter and vanilla into cake crumb mixture. Fold in remaining ingredients. Drop teaspoonfuls onto a greased or lined baking tray (they don't spread much). Bake for 10-12 minutes at 180 C (350 F). Cool on a wire rack.

On the Stereo:
Drugs are Wasted on the Young (EP) – the Dave Graney Show