Make a cake from your leftover holiday candy

by Allen on January 24, 2008 Print This Post Print This Post Email This Post Email This Post

With Christmas behind us for another year and Valentine’s soon approaching, this might be a good time to break out a cake recipe that utilizes all those leftover or unwanted bits of candy. CandyRecapper is hosting a Sugar High Friday event this month, so I decided to break out a wonderful recipe I found at cdkitchen last year.

The cake is sour cream based with vanilla and almond extract as the primary flavorings. The batter is silky and rich … I couldn’t help but to eat a little while it was still uncooked. Of course, this is not recommended due to the raw eggs .. but I like to live on the edge. Fortunately, I was able to complete the batter without eating too much of it.

Leftover Candy Cake

2 cups coarsely chopped leftover candy
2 3/4 cups sifted flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
8 ounces unsalted butter
1 1/2 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup sour cream

The recipe is simple and quick. Preheat oven to 350 — grease and dust a tube/bundt pan. Cream butter in mixer and add remaining wet ingredients, then slowly add dry ingredients, all except the candy. Mix until batter is smooth. Once the batter is ready, a third of it is placed into the pan. To the remaining batter, you add 2 cups of chopped candy … any kind you have on hand. You add the remaining batter to the pan and bake for an hour.

Since I still have alot of leftover Christmas candy, I used a mix of crushed candy canes, mint patties, Hersheys, and Rolos. Caramel, peppermint, chocolate — YUM. Unfortunately, my camera is not cooperating, so I’m using a picture of this same cake I made back in November. The one shown used Almond Joy, Milk Duds, Milky Way, Hersheys, and Kit Kat.

The cake baked evenly and was done in precisely 1 hour. I let it cool in the pan for 15 minutes before removing to a rack. The smell of the cake was intoxicating and it was difficult to let it cool entirely before carving out a wedge.

The cake is moist and wonderful even without the candy. I can see myself making this recipe minus the candy or layered with cinnamon and brown sugar instead of candy. Our pantry still has a bag of eggnog flavored truffles and a partial box of assorted See’s Candies. Hmmmm …..

Unfortunately, my diet is about to start so this may be my last cake for awhile … well, maybe a small nibble here and there :-)

You might also like these posts:
An Italian apple cake - Torta Soffice Di Mele
Insanely good tres leches cake
Turning upside-down over pineapple

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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Ann February 2, 2008 at 7:21 am

The cake sounds fabulous in and of itself. Love how tall and golden it came out!

2 Allen of EOL February 2, 2008 at 9:26 am

Hey Ann, thanks for stopping by. I want to play around with the cake some more to try different fillings and flavorings, but it’s pretty dang good already!

3 Cakelaw February 2, 2008 at 5:54 pm

Hi Allen, tghis cake looks sooo goood - and is a brilliant way to use up leftover candy.

4 Allen of EOL February 2, 2008 at 7:53 pm

Hi Cakelaw — it’s definetly a good way to use up leftover candy. It’s fun to think about different candy combinations — like peanut butter cups, payday, and some hersey kisses … mmmmMMM.

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