Can this cake be saved?

September 7, 2009 11:57 AM

I just made a chocolate birthday cake that fell apart when I took it out of the pan. What now?

I greased the pan with Pam and "floured" it with cocoa, which has worked for me before, so I don't know what went wrong. It's a recipe I've made at least twice before, too. Even if I could reassemble it into a cakelike shape, it's too broken up to slice. What can I do with it? I thought about covering the whole mess with whipped cream, but that's not going to keep before we can eat the cake. I'd like to be able to stick candles into it, too.

posted by zinfandel to Food & Drink (12 answers total)

Squish it all together and pack it tight into a dense ball of cake. Insert candle. Laugh about it with those you're serving it to.
Yummy and fun!
posted by greta simone at 11:59 AM on September 7, 2009

Since you have whipped cream on hand, you could make a trifle or something like it.
posted by motsque at 12:00 PM on September 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

two words: cake balls.
posted by kerning at 12:02 PM on September 7, 2009 [3 favorites]

Chocolate Cake Bread Pudding; cut the sugar in the custard to 1/2 cup, though.
posted by Sidhedevil at 12:06 PM on September 7, 2009

Bread pudding, with cake!
posted by Juliet Banana at 12:06 PM on September 7, 2009

Cake balls cake balls cake balls! They work with pretty much any kind of cake and frosting, and I can attest to their deliciousness. The chocolate covering part can be a bit tricky, though, unless you're a pro at handling melted chocolate.
posted by MadamM at 12:15 PM on September 7, 2009

You could also make an ice cream cake! Put a layer of slightly soft ice cream (not melted, just soft) in a pan. Freeze. Then top it with a layer of the cake. Even if the cake is in pieces, just press it down onto the ice cream. Freeze. You could even frost the top of it. It'll be delicious delicious!

And damn you all, now I need to have cake pudding, right this very instant.
posted by barnone at 12:15 PM on September 7, 2009 [3 favorites]

Can you hold the cake together enough to frost it? You might have to frost it once to stick it together and then again (once the first round frosting has set) for attractiveness. If that works, you should able to stick candles in it. (At that point, the trick is to make someone else cut it and keep a blank look on your face if it falls apart once that happens!)
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 12:22 PM on September 7, 2009

Seconding trifle. Find a big, pretty bowl. Alternate layers of broken cake (moistened with liqueur if you like) with custard or pudding, smashed candy bars, nuts, fruit or jam, cookies, etc. Top with whipped cream and broken candy pieces or fruit or nuts or shaved chocolate. Pretend you intended this all along. Good luck!
posted by sister nunchaku of love and mercy at 12:29 PM on September 7, 2009

Just ice it. Isn't that the traditional solution? The icing/frosting would make it look nice and hold it together enough to slice. Or is it just a mass of crumbs? In that case, trifle definitely.
posted by CunningLinguist at 1:21 PM on September 7, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks for all your answers, everybody. I asked the birthday person and he wanted an ice cream cake, so I went with barnone's suggestion and it's setting up in the freezer right now. However, I had almost half the chunks left over, so I put those aside in the freezer. I'll probably make cake balls next week.
posted by zinfandel at 1:42 PM on September 7, 2009

In a bakery I worked in, we crumbled leftover cake (from cutting cakes to level them before assembling layer cakes) into fine, even crumbs and pressed them into the frosting on the sides of finished layer cakes for decoration. That'd give you something to do with them now rather than next week if you wanted to.
posted by jocelmeow at 1:50 PM on September 8, 2009