Recipe Rescue: Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake Crumble

Not wanting to waste the lemon and poppy seed fail cake, I thought of options for rescuing the cake. Due to the incredibly crumbly nature of the cake, I thought that it would make a suitable crumble topping - with the addition of a bunch of sugar, that is.

I made an apple and rhubarb crumble with repurposed lemon and poppy seed cake topping.

I bake crumbles in individual serves. It takes no extra effort (except for the dishes-doer; but that's not me!), it makes it easier to control portion sizes (it's SO easy to grab a second helping from a large crumble...), and it's really quite satisfying to eat a crumble straight out of the oven dish (wrapped in a tea towel to avoid burnination).


Apple and rhubarb in single-serve baking dishes


For each serve of crumble, I used a slice of cake about an inch thick, and an abundantly heaped dessert spoon on brown sugar. The cake contained almonds and plenty of lemony flavour, so I didn't think any additional spices were required.


Cake and sugar


The crumble came out darker than usual after 15 minutes. It makes sense, considering the topping was already cooked, and the amount of sugar I added.


Darkly done crumble topping


It was tasty, though. Very very good. There was certainly a lot more sugar than required, so for the individual serves I made up for the freezer, I used about half as much sugar. However, there were no complaints, from myself or Neil. The topping was good and crispy, too. I'd never had a lemon flavoured crumble topping before, and it was divine.


This picture makes me drool


I'd even consider making the cake again just for the crumble topping it makes! (Though, regular crumble topping is easier - so perhaps I'd be better working on a crumble mix that isn't a cake first!)