Junk Cake

Anyone who has moved house will know that there comes a point where one must decide what to do with all the random bits of food in the backs of cupboards and the freezer. Do you a) keep them, and take them with you to your next home? Or b) try to use them up?

This cake is for those of you who chose option b.

 As regulars will know, I just moved house. During the chaotic last seven days in my flat, I was faced with the same decision I just gave all of you. When it came to clearing through all of my belongings and slowly realising that they would not all fit in my little Nissan Micra, holding on to scraps of food and open bags of cake decorations was not going to be worth the struggle. And so, this Junk Cake was born.

This cake is designed to hold everything you want to use up. It becomes a nifty way to feed all your sugary food scraps to innocent friends and family in the guise of making a farewell cake, albeit an unusual one. My cake contained scraps of: Sour Cherry & Pistachio Biscuit Dough; Golden Graham cheesecake base; white chocolate chips; glace cherries; fruit split ice lollies. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that this cake is based on ice cream.

I bought some fruit split lollies (the ones with a fruity ice exterior and an ice cream middle, all on a wooden stick) a while back but wasn’t keen on them, so they’d been lounging in my freezer for most of the summer. Whilst clearing through my food supplies to find scraps for my Junk Cake, I found them and, remembering the Salted Caramel Ice Cream Loaf Cake I’d made, knew exactly what I would do. The latter cake was made shortly after befriending my flatmate (in fact it was him who introduced me to the concept), so in a way it was nice to make another ice cream cake and bring our time together full circle.

In this cake, the ice cream replaces the egg, sugar and fat. I only had 100g ice cream so I made 100g of normal cake batter to make up the volume of the cake. If you have 200g (room temperature) ice cream, omit the sugar, butter and eggs and simply skip to the part where we fold in the ice cream.

Ingredients

• 100g Butter
• 100g Caster Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 100g Ice Cream (room temperature)
• 100g Plain Flour
• 2 Tsp Baking Powder
• 2-3 Tbsp Milk
• 100-200g Sweet Food Scraps (see above for examples)

Recipe

•  Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan and line two cake tins or a tray bake tin with baking parchment.
• Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
• Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until the batter is smooth.
• Sieve the flour and baking powder into the batter, and fold in until well combined.
• Fold in the room temperature (i.e. melted) ice cream until well combined.
• If the batter does not have a soft dropping consistency, fold in the milk until this is achieved.
• Chop up any large lumps of sweet food scraps and fold into the batter until well combined.
• Divide the batter between the cake tins, or spread over a tray bake tin. Bake in the oven for 22 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean (keeping in mind that some things like chocolate won’t solidify until the cake cools down).
• Turn out onto a wire rack and allow to cool.