What To Do With Leftover Halloween Candy

Make a big, huge, indulgent cake, that’s what!

I had a bunch of snack-sized assorted chocolate bars left over, and I wanted to use them up and get them out of the house in one fell swoop, so I turned to Marcy Goldman’s A Passion for Baking.

My mission:  To use up a bunch of odds and ends in my baking pantry  by making Goldman’s Caramel-Chocolate Cookie-Stuffed Sour Cream Deluxe Cake. Leftover chocolate bars, chocolate chips, dulce to leche, sour cream, and chocolate syrup came together in a HUGE tube cake.  This thing would feed an army!

The tasting results:  even after I had added some lemon zest, I thought the cake was too sweet (as usual,because I think most desserts are too sweet).  Again, as usual, my husband’s co-workers loved this, and did not think it was too sweet at all.  Women, in particular, seemed to like this cake.  Chocolate, you see, is soul food to many females.

One of the handy little gadgets that I used was my new flexible red silicon bowl, a birthday gift from my in-laws.  It’s wonderful for holding dry ingredients, making it a lot easier to add them to the mixing bowl of a stand mixer.

Some tips:  make sure that the cake pan is very well greased and floured to prevent it from sticking to the sides.  I also recommend baking this on a baking sheet because the cake is so dense that it bakes for quite a long time, and without the baking sheet, the bottom of the cake may over-brown.

Recipe after the jump

Caramel-Chocolate Cookie-Stuffed Sour Cream Deluxe Cake
Adapted from a recipe by Marcy Goldman in A Passion for Baking

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
5 large eggs, room temperature
1 Tbsp. pure vanilla extract
finely grated zest of one lemon
1 cup sour cream (I used low fat – HA HA HA!)
4 cups all purpose flour
4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
3 cups coarsely chopped candy bars, like Twix, Snickers, etc.
1 cup coarsely chopped chocolate bar (milk, semisweet, dark – whatever you have)
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
3/4 cup dulce de leche, or caramel sauce
1/3 cup chocolate syrup

To finish:
1/2 cup melted chocolate chips for drizzling (optional)
OR, confectioners sugar, for dusting (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 F, and set rack in middle of the oven.  Spray a 10-inch angel food cake pan with baking spray, or butter and flour generously.  Place on a baking sheet and set aside.

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside.

Using a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs, vanilla, lemon zest, and sour cream.  Gently fold in the flour mixture, making sure that it is blended in thoroughly, but being careful not to over mix.  Fold in about one-third each of the candy bars, chocolate chips, and pecans.

Spoon two thirds of the batter into the prepared pan, and add dollops of the dulce de leche and chocolate syrup as you do so.  Place another third of the candy bars, chips, and nuts on top of this layer of batter.  Top with the remaining third of the batter, and then the remaining dulce de leche, chocolate syrup, nuts, candy bars, and chips.  You don’t have to be precise – the goal is to get a nice mixture and layering of the ingredients.  Swirl a butter knife gently through the batter, making sure that chunkier pieces on top are partially submerged into the batter.

Bake about 75 to 80 minutes, or until the cake is a golden brown and springs back when you press it gently with your fingertip.  You can run a skewer into the center of the cake to test it, as well, but if you hit a big pocket of caramel sauce, you may think the cake is raw when it’s actually cooked.  It may also pull away slightly from the sides of the pan when it’s done.  You will just have to keep an eye on it and use your best judgment.  Cool the cake and unmold onto a serving plate.  You can drizzle melted chocolate on it, or dust with confectioners sugar.