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 a lot of leftover Christmas candy, I used a mix of crushed candy canes, mint patties, Hershey’s, 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, Hershey’s, 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