Random update and a recipe

I know, I know! I've really, REALLY neglected this blog, but I have a good excuse right now as my husband and I have just bought our first house, and most of my time has been taken up with house searching, viewing, packing and moving and now I'm sitting surrounded by boxes! I do have a pretty good wedding cake I did for some friends that has Sonic the Hedgehog and Amy on top. I am so, so proud of it, and my husband even videoed walking around it if I can work out how to post that here, so look out for that!

Well, just so this isn't an entirely pointless 'update' I'd like to share a 'recipe' of sorts, as I made it today, and I thought I'd share!

Well, what do you do if you decorate a lot of cakes and you have all sorts of cake trimmings? You know, all the off cuts from the cakes that get cut to shape. All the burnt edges, and odd shapes you can't quite sandwich up into some sort of cake to present to anyone, ever? What about the extra left over buttercream, or even slightly stale cake bits?! Well... I have the answer!

What I do is something my Mother In Law and me invented once (but is most likely invented by someone else at some point). We call them truffles as they are quite truffley.

Get all the leftover bits of sponge cake (I've not tried it with fruit cake, but it could possibly work, not sure about fruitcake and buttercream though!) and crumbs and buttercream and whatnot. Plop the lot into the bowl of a mixer (I have a Kenwood Chef I love, but you could possibly use a hand mixer) crumble up the biggest bits of cake so it's not too hard on the old thing, and then whizz the hell out of it in the machine. If the mixture looks a bit dry, add some butter, if it looks a bit wet, add some icing sugar and/or cocoa, in fact it's best to add some of all of those things unless you had a lot of left over buttercream. If you want to add extra indulgence, melt some chocolate, and pour it into the mixture. For grown-ups only, a splash of booze is really good.

Once this concoction is whizzed into a big cakey gloop that sort of holds some shape, take gobs of it out, roll it in your palms into a ball, then roll in either icing sugar, cocoa powder or both, and plop on a baking sheet/big flat plate or something with baking parchment on it and chill the lot.

Wahay! A use for left overs! RECYCLING FTW!

Try to remember that what you are eating that can be gone in seconds is essentially a ball of cake with added sugar and fat, so it's not a good idea to eat lots of them on a regular basis, but it's a fabulous way to use up bits that would be scrap otherwise and just get binned.

I just made some of this earlier today, and it was looking too runny, and my husband said "just pass me the bowl and a spoon.." so this is also an option if you are feeling a bit greedy!