You do not have to throw away cake that has crumbled and/or looks less than perfect -- you can have your crumbled cake and eat it too if you're willing to refashion the pieces into other edible desserts. Reuse the crumbled cake pieces as building components of desserts, or recombine them with other ingredients to bake up as cookies or other bonbons.
Make Cake Balls or Pops
Cake crumbles can be reason enough to celebrate if it means turning them into cake pops. You start with freshly baked cake that you crumble into fine crumbs; if you have cake that has broken into odds and ends of various sizes, break them up into smaller, workable pieces. To these crumbs add cream cheese, powdered sugar, butter and milk that you have whipped together. These form the binding for the crumbs, which should then form a stiff dough. After storing the dough in the refrigerator, roll pieces of the chilled dough into balls, stick lollipop sticks into them and dip the treats into melted chocolate bark. Optionally, decorate the finished pops with sprinkles and candies.
Make Parfaits and Layered Desserts
Parfaits are a good opportunity to use up crumbled cake, as the multilayered desserts rely on small pieces of cake as one of the building components of the visually-variegated dessert. You might alternate layers of cake crumbles in an individual glass with layers of sliced fruit, then another layer of creme anglaise, or custard sauce. For a layered dessert, assemble the crumbled cake in a pan, scatter the cake on the bottom, and then heap up vanilla pudding followed by whipped cream.
Make Cookies
Another redo on crumbled cake takes the cake crumbs, then rebakes them with additional ingredients to make cookies. Make spice, chocolate chip or coconut-drop cookies by starting with a base of cake crumbs, shortening, leavening, sugar, egg yolks and water. Add other ingredients like raisins, nuts and spices for spice cookies, or chocolate chips, cocoa and coconut for other types of cookies, and then bake as you would ordinary cookie dough.
Use for Toppings or Crust
Cake crumbs do not have to go to waste if you use them already pre-crumbled as a topping for ice creams and other desserts, wherever a soft, cake-like texture is desired. Additionally, press the cake crumbs into a pie pan, add a layer of banana slices, and then fill the pie with a mixture of cream cheese and condensed milk.