Christmas leftovers: what to do with leftover cake, bread, cookies and chocolate!
Many people always manage to outdo themselves at Christmas. Both in the amount of treats we manage to conjure up on the table and in how much we succeed to eat from it with the whole family. But it is at the same time inevitable: you always end up with leftovers. Fortunately, those leftovers turn out to be just as tasty and perfectly suitable to change into a new delicious treat! With these 5 ideas you give your leftovers a delicious second life.
Leftover cake from your Christmas pie is perfect for making cake pops. Crumble the cake in a blender or food processor and then mix with buttercream and cream cheese or a bit of melted chocolate into a dough ball. Form small balls from the cake dough and put lollipop sticks in the balls.
Tip! Dip the end of the sticks in some melted chocolate before you stick them in the balls, this will prevent the cake balls from falling off the sticks.
Place the cake pops in the freezer for an hour and then glaze them with melted chocolate or Deco Melts. And there you go, a delicious little treat to finish off the holidays.
Cake Bowls are the newest food bowls and are perfect for leftover goodies from your Christmas dinner. So always wanted to try such a bowl? Now is the time. You probably have some leftover cake and some buttercream or pastry cream left over from your dessert! Any chocolates you served with your coffee left? Probably also some different kinds of fruit? Put them together in a bowl and your Cake Bowl is ready to get a spoon in. Read more about building your own cake bowl here.
Real chocolate addicts cannot imagine it, but there are people who have Christmas chocolates left in their shelves until Easter. Think about melting it so you can use the chocolate in baking! Melt the chocolate au bain-marie and make Choco Bombs, for example! Looking back on those wonderful Christmas days with a cup of hot chocolate, what’s better than that?
When melting chocolate to create new treats with, do make sure to temper your chocolate! How? Watch the video to find out.
At the Christmas breakfast or brunch everyone knows how much there’s yet to come the rest of the day.. And so you always end up with a few slices of Christmas bread. No worries though, the well-known trick to make French toast from leftover bread also works perfectly with Christmas bread! And as always with French toast, some might say it tastes better than the original bread…
Time to tidy up the Christmas tree again, but is it still full of Christmas cookies? Cookies that have probably been in there for too long in the first place.. Ready for the trash can? Certainly not! So many options to change your leftover cookies into something new. For example, roughly crumble them in the blender and roast them on a baking tray. Delicious as a crunchy topping over your yogurt. Or mix them with some butter, cream and melted chocolate and then roll them in the cacoa for delicious chocolate truffles! Can you handle an extra cake after the holidays? Then choose a cheesecake with a bottom of leftover Christmas cookies.
Is there no way you can still see sweet treats after the holidays? Then there’s still no reason to throw food away. Read our blog about freezing and storing here. Many cakes, dough and creams can perfectly be saved in the freezer until after January ;).