Cake cookies, front left, made with corn cookie batter; corn cookies upper right
Our cake cookies are not made from cake mix like this appealing recipe, but actual leftover cake of the type that is often found around the holidays. It’s best to use a cake with some body to it or else a cake that has been sitting around and dried out. Not sure what to do if it has frosting: scrape it off, or leave it and see what happens. Makes 20-24 cake cookies.
Ingredients:
1 recipe Cristina Tosi’s Corn Cookies batter or equivalent containing egg and a good amount of butterfat
1 to 1 1/2 c leftover cake (we used a walnut cinnamon coffee cake)
Method: prepare cookie batter according to directions in a rotary mixer. (If you’re using the corn cookie recipe you could substitute regular cornmeal for the ground-up freeze dried corn). Crumble cake into the bowl of batter and mix on first speed until well combined, a minute or two. You can add as much cake as you point up to the point where the dough is about to pull apart because it can’t absorb any more crumbs.
Use a quarter cup measure (or guesswork) to form finished batter into balls. Place these on a half sheet pan lined with silicone pad or parchment paper, then press down to flatten tops (we use a second sheet pan for this). Wrap well with plastic wrap and refrigerate until stiff, ideally overnight.
To bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a second lined half sheet pan and distribute the cookie balls over the two sheets with good separation between then. Bake for 22 minutes, checking to make sure they don’t burn. When done the cookies should be crisp around the edges and slightly soft in the middle. Rest on the pans until they firm up, then transfer to wire rack and cool completely. Will keep up to 5 days covered at room temperature, or a month or two in the freezer.
