Earlier this month, I had a disappointing experience with a chocolate cake recipe, resulting with a VERY DRY cake. I really hate throwing away food, especially in this case as the cake was made with really good chocolate/cocoa powder and other high quality ingredients. So, this poor forlorn cake sat in the kitchen over a week, as I contemplated its future. What to do --- make a trifle, layer it in a parfait? --- then it dawned on me…BREAD PUDDING!!!! I took my go-to bread pudding recipe, substituted the bread with the cake, and eliminated the sugar in the custard base. Here is the original recipe for Bread Pudding, with my adjustments in parentheses:Bread Pudding
Ingredients
½ loaf stale challah or French bread (6 C. stale/dry chocolate cake cut into cubes)
1 C milk
2 C heavy cream
3 eggs
¾ C sugar (excluded)
¼ tsp cinnamon (increased to ½ tsp)
1 tsp orange zest (excluded)
1 tbsp vanilla extract
½ C raisins (excluded)
½ C chopped pecans (substituted ½ C choc chips)
Instructions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter a baking dish.
In a large bowl, beat together milk, cream, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, orange zest and vanilla. Add cubed bread and stir to combine. Add raisins and pecans and stir to combine. Pour mixture into prepared pan. (As the cake is more fragile than bread, I first placed the cake cubes and choc chips in the baking dish, combined the remaining ingredients, and poured the custard mixture over the cake cubes.)
Bake until browned and custard is set, approximately 1 hour.
The verdict ---I was absolutely surprised that this could pass for a respectable dessert! You really don’t see the layers of cake as you would with a bread pudding, but it does remind me of a flourless chocolate cake or a fallen soufflé cake. Thanks to my fellow foodies at chowhound for helping me brainstorm through this problem!
15 comments:
thank you! this is exactly what I was looking for, as I forgot I still had a chocolate cake in the over and turned it off partway through baking it. (I had made mini-cupcakes and had left over batter that I put in a little decorative cake mold). I'll let you know how my milk-substitute version of this recipe turns out and post it here in the comments.
I have a bunch of chocolate cake scraps because I cut out individual sized cakes out of a larges one and was thinking the same thing, Chocolate Cake Bread Pudding. I was so surprised when I typed that into google somthing actually came up. Anyway, thanks. Also, I am not sure what the recipe was that failed you but I have learned that butter in cake always spells DRY and that oile is much better (whick is what makes that double chocolate layer cake from epicurious so good, it is also my favorite!)
I baked a HUGE batch of chocolate chip muffins in the summer (put them in the freezer as school lunch snacks for the children). Then I discovered that I'd forgotten to put sugar in them. They tasted foul! I'm trying your recipe as a way of using some of them up (only I won't be leaving out the sugar... this time!).
Thank You so much. My daughter made a chocolate brownie for an unhappy friend but wasn't able to deliver it to her fresh so I put it in the freezer.
Just delivered a delicious dessert for a dinner party and everyone was very impressed. I can do the same with the cupcakes which went the same way at the cake.
Wonderful.
I used this recipe to salvage some brownies that turned out way too dry and it was delicious!! I ended up adding some sugar to the custard since the brownies weren't that sweet but the texture I ended up with was great.
Great idea! I made a bomb of a German chocolate cake this week...tasted good, but too dry, so I think I may try this idea tomorrow. Thanks for sharing!
Had some left over cupcakes that got stale, I cut the recipe in half and we'll see how it goes!
Great recipe, I halved the recipe using cupcakes I had hanging around from a birthday party. I'll let you know how it worked
oh... Thank you SO MUCH. We had a really dry Bundt cake, but it had really good bittersweet chocolate in it, so we couldn't throw it away. Tried your recipe but besides the chocolate chips added an equal amount of pecans and coco nibs. Yummy. oh and you said the cake cubes were fragile. I frozen the cake first then cut in cubes. The frozen cubes were sturdy enough to be handled with the rest of the ingredients
Thanks so much from yet another disappointed-with-a-dry-cake Googler! Obviously, great minds all think alike, since we all thought of bread pudding as a way to rescue our unhappy baked goods, and we all found your recipe!
So glad I found this! I accidentally baked a chocolate cake with only half the butter, and I was so frustrated at having to bake a new one that I just froze the old one. Now I've recovered and have been trying to figure out what to do with it (I don't like cake balls) - a friend suggested making a bread pudding but I wasn't sure exactly how to do that with a cake, so I was thrilled to find an account of someone who actually had. Thanks!
So glad I found this! I accidentally baked a chocolate cake with only half the butter, and I was so frustrated at having to bake a new one that I just froze the old one. Now I've recovered and have been trying to figure out what to do with it (I don't like cake balls) - a friend suggested making a bread pudding but I wasn't sure exactly how to do that with a cake, so I was thrilled to find an account of someone who actually had. Thanks!
Thanks for this great recipe. I had a chocolate Bundt cake fail to come out of the mould so I had one half of a two-cake mix worth of crumbs left over after salvaging the bottom of cake. What to do? I found your recipe. Brilliant. I left in the raisons and the orange zest, and put the cinnamon as suggested, since I love oranges, fruits and spices. I should have put in dark chocolate pieces to make it more chocolaty, but I will do it next time! I went half milk/half cream because I was feeling guilty having such a decadent desert AND having a chocolate cake in the house.. I agree with you that It made a fluffy soufflé type of pudding.
Thanks for this great recipe. I had a chocolate Bundt cake fail to come out of the mould so I had one half of a two-cake mix worth of crumbs left over after salvaging the bottom of cake. What to do? I found your recipe. Brilliant. I left in the raisons and the orange zest, and put the cinnamon as suggested, since I love oranges, fruits and spices. I should have put in dark chocolate pieces to make it more chocolaty, but I will do it next time! I went half milk/half cream because I was feeling guilty having such a decadent desert AND having a chocolate cake in the house.. I agree with you that It made a fluffy soufflé type of pudding.
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