A Good Save

 I'm often asked to bring dessert when we go to someone's home for dinner because my friends know that I love to bake and to share what I bake. A couple days after Christmas we were going to a family dinner for nine, so I decided to bake a Bundt cake since that can serve a good number of people. I found a recipe for a Gingerbread Bundt Cake on King Arthur Baking website and I even had the ingredients for it.

It really did make a delicious cake, but the texture was pretty delicate, not the usual fairly solid and sturdy texture that a Bundt cake needs. Since I baked it in a snowflake Bundt pan it wasn't surprising, given the texture, that it didn't come out of the pan in one piece. So, here I was a few hours before leaving for the dinner with no cake to take and not enough time to make another...what to do??

I suspect that I had read somewhere that you can create a dessert with broken cake, but I really have no memory of it. I just had this brainstorm to combine the cake pieces with softened vanilla ice cream and with whipped cream and then pack it into a cake pan and to freeze it so that it became a dessert rather than a cake. To tie it all together I made my Mom's recipe for Fresh Lemon Sauce to drizzle over each serving. It was a hit! The photo I took was of what was left after the first servings...not a great photo, but the only one I have. Trust me, it tastes far better than it looks.

Because I only had a pint of vanilla ice cream and a half pint of whipping cream, I didn't use the whole cake...I used about 3/4 of it. I lined a 9x13-inch pan with heavy duty foil, added the ice cream-whipped cream-cake mixture and leveled it, then put that into the freezer. Sweetie found our old ice chest and so it traveled with ice below and above the dessert. It didn't really look that pretty, but the lemon sauce helped a little to dress it up and really added to the flavor. If you've never had gingerbread and lemon sauce, do try it. The recipe for the Lemon Sauce is HERE.

I'm not going to give the recipe for the Gingerbread Bundt because you can get it from the King Arthur baking website. I suspect that this would work with gingerbread made from a mix from the grocery store, too. Hope that your family loves it as much as mine did!

A Good Save Gingerbread Dessert

About 3/4 of a 10-12 cup Bundt cake that is Gingerbread
1 pint vanilla ice cream
1/2 pint whipping cream, cold

Tear the gingerbread cake into chunks and tiny pieces, mixed and put into a large mixing bowl.

Let the vanilla ice cream soften slightly.

In a cold bowl with cold beaters, whip the cream until firm peaks form.

Combine the softened ice cream, the whipping cream and the cake pieces. Most of the cake should have at least a little of the dairy in/on the pieces.

Line a 9x13-inch cake pan with foil. Add the cake mixture and use a spatula to level the mixture. Cover with more foil and freeze for up to two hours.

To serve, use a sharp knife to cut the dessert into squares about 3x3-inches each. Serve on a plate and drizzle (optional but really good) with Lemon Sauce. Serve at once.