Does anyone have any good ideas for using the cake scraps when leveling your cakes? I hate to be wasteful and just throw them out. Other than cake crumbs, I don't have any ideas. How about you?

I give them to my dad with some left over icing!! He loves it!

cakeballs!!

I tried looking for the recipe....I"ll keep looking...

Basically, you take the cake scrapes, add some icing and stuff...make balls and dip in chocolate...yum

You can make "Cake Balls"...first I'd ever heard of it was here...sounds strange, I know, but the recipes I've seen people post sound wonderful. They end up being sort of like a truffle type of treat & everyone here that's made them loves them. Run a search for "cake balls" or "Cookieman" - that's whose recipe I recall people talking about the most. And there's a few pics in the gallery too - in know peacockplace has some in her pics that are adorable and look soooo good!

Found this in another forum given by MrsMissey:

Here is Cookieman's recipe...
2 cups crumbled cake scraps
2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa powder (if cake scraps are not chocolate based)
1/4 cup chopped almonnds (or any other nut you like, or mini-chocolate chips, or M&Ms, you get the idea!)
2 generous shots of amaretto (or any other liquer you may like, a good non-alcohol substitution is any flavored coffee creamer)

Put all ingredients in a mixer and mix on medium speed until the ingedients form a ball. If the mixture seems too dry, add a bit more of the liquid used to make it moist enough to form into balls.

I use a tablespoon cookie scoop to make the balls uniform in size. Roll the scooped dough in your hands to form a nice smooth ball. Allow cake balls to set on a parchment lined cookie sheet for a couple of hours, then dip them in chocolate(following) or roll them in confectioners' sugar or cocoa.

Melt 1 lb. of candy melts and add approximately a tablespoons of crisco to make it a bit more smooth. Also, put the container (in my case, a pyrex measuring cup) of melted candy melts in a very hot (I use amost boiling) water bath to keep the chocolate fluid. dip balls into the chocolate using a spoon and a dipping fork (in my case, a plastic fork with the two middle tines cut out) Don't worry if the dipped balls have a "foot" at the base after drying. You can break some off after they have hardened and once they are in the little cake liners, no one will notice. Also, you can decorate the tops with just about anything, sprinkles, candy confetti, chopped nuts, etc. before they dry. Or after they've dried, pipe designs with royal icing or melted candy melts of differnet colors!

Lemondrop...I think those would be cake balls. I have also heard of people making a triffle with the scraps layered with pudding.
traci

JennT, that does sound really good!
traci

Thanks for your replies! I will try the cake ball recipie! If they turn out good, I may make them for gifts during the holidays!

When I was in college I worked at an old german bakery. They sliced the scraps thinlly and used them to build the center layers (if your cakes are more than 2 layers) of their cakes. It was a great way to use up scraps. It can also help you get a little bit of height if your tiers aren't all the same height.

Nermal,
I am new and still working on getting level layers every time. I find that the cake scraps are much easier for me to use to fix a layer than using just buttercream. A little cake scrap and a glob of buttercream are an easy fix for this newbie.