What to do with all the delicious homemade pastries after holidays or when they are a bit stale? One of the options is to freeze them and use later, when craving something sweet again, to make a new cake.
The original recipe for this cake comes from https://skandibaking.com/ and describes this as a typical Danish treat, called “Student bread”, which can be found in most bakeries. The bakeries make this cake to reuse leftover pastries. As the cake made of leftover pastries is cheap, it is affordable for students, therefore the name of the cake.
So if we have some leftover cakes after holidays, why not make use of them and make ourselves a cheap and easy to make treat. 🙂
Equipment
- I am using a baking tray size: 24.5 x 21 x 4 cm / 9.5 x 8.5 x 1.5 inches (fits 1.5 litres / 6.25 cups).
Ingredients
For the shortcrust pastry base:
- 150 g / 1.3 cups all-purpose flour
- 25 g / 0.2 cups powdered sugar
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 100 g / 0.4 cups butter (unsalted, cold)
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tsp vanilla
Cake layer:
- 600 g / 1.3 lbs leftover cake – muffins, pound cake, cookies, etc. (Defrost, if frozen)
- 150 g / 0.9 cups dark chocolate
- 4 tbsp (about 40 g) unsweetened cocoa powder
- 6 tbsp jam (I use raspberry jam)
- 4 tbsp rum
Icing on top:
- 200 g / 1.7 cups powdered sugar
- Lemon juice
- 2 tsp of raspberry jam without seeds (optional)
Instructions
Making shortcrust pastry base for the cake:
- Sift flour in a big bowl. Add to it the powdered sugar, salt and mix.
- Crumble the cold butter and mix it with the flour till it all forms big crumbles.
- Add an egg yolk and vanilla in the bowl. Mix everything to form crumbly dough. It will be a bit sticky, but that’s fine. Just get the dough together, wrap in a plastic wrap and put in the fridge to chill for about half an hour.
- When ready to bake, set the oven to heat to 180 degrees Celsius or 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Cut parchment paper in the size of the baking tray you will use and dust the kitchen countertop with a bit of flour.
- Roll the dough thin, approximately the size of the baking tray, cake pan or in a rectangle if you will make the cake in a bigger baking tray and not fill the whole tray.
- Put the dough on the parchment paper and in the baking tray. The dough needs to be only in a layer on the bottom, therefore either cut the sides, which go up and bake the scraps as cookies or add them to the filling, or fold them down and level in the base of the cake.
- Punch the dough a bit with a fork, so that it does not puff up, and bake for about 15 to 20 minutes till the sides start to lightly brown. Let the pastry cool completely before assembling the cake (while making the main cake layer).
Main layer of the cake:
- Crumble all the cakes, muffins and cookies you will use in the cake. Whatever good, tasty things you have in the cake leftovers, will be in the new cake.
- Add to the crumbs the cocoa powder, rum or another alcohol if you don’t want to use rum, and 4 tablespoons of jam.
- Melt the chocolate, add in the bowl and mix everything well. The batter is quite dry and hard, therefore I mix it with my hands.
- Spread two tablespoons of jam over the cooled pastry base.
- Put the main cake layer on top, pushing gently not to crumble the base layer, and level.
- On top pour a thin layer of icing. For that mix powdered sugar with some lemon juice. You can also use water. I am using lemon juice as I want to have a bit of contrast to the sweetness of the cake. If the icing is more liquid, it will be a bit runny and take longer to harden.
- As last, to decorate, put a few drops of raspberry jam without seeds on top of the cake and put the cake in the fridge for about an hour to allow it to set and chill.
- And enjoy!
Notes
- For best results, measure ingredients with a scale. All recipes are made with weighed ingredients using grams. Cup measurements are provided for your convenience.