5 ways to use up crumbs leftover after baking

There are lots of perks to baking. You get to control the ingredients, it’s fun and you get food at the end of it. Then you get an extra bonus – the crumbs! We always save the crumbs from the pan or tray the food was baked in and also the crumbs that fall through the spaces in the cooling rack. There are loads of crumb recipes that make good use of them and here are 5 ideas to get you started.

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5 crumb recipes

Crumb balls recipes

I say recipe, but really these are just suggestions and I don’t give quantities because it depends on what you have available.

The stick it together recipe

If the crumbs are still warm and a bit sticky, you can squash them all together into a ball (or a few balls depending on how many crumbs you have). I find this works best when the finished product is meant to be chewy, is verging on under cooked. For example, moist brownie and sticky flapjack crumbs make good crumb balls. It’s a great way to rescue a bake that won’t retain the shape you hoped it would be too!

The combine it with something sticky recipe

If the crumbs aren’t sticky mix them up with a dried fruit e.g. dates, raisins, figs or apricots which have been blended in a food processor. If the dried fruit you have to hand is on the dry side rather than the sticky side add a little liquid e.g. fruit juice or water. Be careful to only add a little so that it doesn’t go too runny. You could also stick the crumbs together with some coconut oil, if you don’t want to use dried fruit (or don’t have any available). Get creative and make up your own crumb ball recipes!

Cheesecake

Usually you would use crushed digestive biscuits mixed with butter for a cheesecake base. However you could use any leftover biscuit baking crumbs or even flapjack crumbs in place of digestive biscuits to make an alternative cheesecake base.

If you only have a small amount of crumbs, make a mini cheesecake! Take your favourite cheesecake recipe and scale it down to suit the amount of crumbs you have.

Ice cream or yoghurt topper

crumbs

We usually put spare crumbs straight into a jar to save for later. Then my kids sprinkle them on small bowls of yogurt as a dessert. You can also do the same with ice cream. It is a great way to jazz up a bowl of plain yoghurt or vanilla ice cream, but works with flavoured yoghurts and ice creams too.

This is a really quick and easy crumb recipe, which involves very little effort!

Apple crumble

Apple crumble is one of my favourite desserts! I usually make the crumble topping from scratch, but if you already have crumbs to use up you could sprinkle them on top of the apple base instead. Dot over a little oil or butter to stop the crumbs from burning.

If you only have a small amount of crumbs make a mini crumble with one apple or even half an apple in a small oven proof dish. This is a great one to add to your list of crumb recipes.

Breadcrumb cookies

I tried out this biscuit bread crumb recipe recently. There is no reason you couldn’t use cake crumbs too. If you do make these cookies out of stale breadcrumbs, my recommendation is to eat them straight away because the cookies tasted a little stale after a day or two.

If you don’t want to use them up straight away you could freeze them. This is also useful if you want to accumulate larger quantities for a big pie or cheesecake!  

Comments

  1. What an original idea and who of us hasn't been in that position faced with a load of crumbs that we would normally throw away or give to the birds! Thanks so much for sharing at Wednesday's Seasonal Celebration! Have a good week:-)Rebecca@ Natural Mothers Network x

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