Cooking: It's a Birthday all over again... only better.

Saturday was my birthday, and since we were phenomenally broke, I made a yellow cake from scratch from the "Homemade Pantry" cookbook (oy, what a pain with the separating eggs from yolks and such, and it ended up dry.  Delicious, but dry.)  And I frosted it with a tub of store-bought frosting that was probably way past its "Best if used by" date (okay, I won't lie... it was.  But that's a freshness date, not a "OMG you'll die if you eat this" date).

Since the cake was pretty dry, after the first half of it was gone, it wasn't moving very fast out of the fridge, even with a layer of my orange marmalade between the top and bottom layers.  Let me rephrase... a half a cup of orange marmalade mixed with a half a cup of apple juice, between two layers of yellow cake.  And it was still dry.

So here I am with a half a cake, broke, and unsure what to do with it.  I made it into a bread pudding, frosting and all.  Holy hannah!  It saved it for sure.  So here is my recipe for...


Birthday Cake Pudding

1/2 of a standard yellow birthday cake with chocolate fudge frosting  (about 3-4 cups cubed)
1 C milk (I used whole, but 2% should be fine)
2 eggs

Generously grease a 9x13 pan with butter or margarine.  (I would use ceramic, as they heat more slowly and won't burn the sugary bits around the edges from the frosting).  Take the cake and cut it into one-inch cubes and arrange them in the pan, distributing the bits with frosting as evenly as possible.  Everyone can get their fair share of the fudgey goodness! 

In a mixing bowl, combine milk and eggs and whisk until thoroughly combined and evenly yellow in color.  Pour this mixture over the cake.  Cover with plastic wrap, and carefully smoosh it down.  What you're trying to do is make sure the milk mixture gets distributed through all the cake.  It also tends to smooth out the top nicely.  Refrigerate for at least one hour.  You want to make sure the mixture soaks into every part.  Bread pudding, or in this case, cake pudding, is a lot like making french toast.  It's no good if the middle part is plain, un-coated bread.

Preheat your oven to 350°F.  Remove plastic wrap and bake in the oven for one hour.  If you've used a metal pan, check it sooner because the sugar in the frosting will burn.  The entire pan should be set.  If the center jiggles like jell-o as you're taking it out, put it back in. 

When done, a knife inserted in the center will come out clean, the top will be golden brown, and it will look as though it has puffed up like a marshmallow.

What you end up with is a delicious spoonable custard, flavored like cake, with marbled swirls of fudge throughout.  It went so fast, I didn't even get a picture.  But I will definitely be doing this again.