Growing up in Germany we had something similar. I loved it and stopped at the bakery often to buy a piece. My mother would just shake her head and call "Zusammengefegtes" (swept up stuff).

local, you were a brave kid! I would never have eaten anything like that as a kid and wouldn't eat it now either! I don't like jam, don't like liquor in my food and prefer my cakes to be simple and made of chocolate!

Glassberl, that word sounds familiar. I can roll it around in my mouth and hear it in my head, I wonder if my granny called it that too, she was German. The bakery was German.

"Dregs from the dustpan"?

Sounds rather tasty, though - but for home: not prior to driving.

o j

I remember a cake like that from G&M, an Austrian bakery on Madison Ave. In NYC. Everything in that place was delicious.

Not stale stuff but our local swiss bakery, Andre's, uses crumbs in some of their pastries. I love their Matterhorns which are a mix of buttercream type filling and cake crumbs piled on a cookie then dipped in some type of chocolate that firms but is slightly grainy. Of course they put a little white icing on the top.

Local eater, that sounds scrumptious. I wish I could find a recipe. Better yet would be going to Bookwoman's Austrian bakery in NYC.

I don't want to eat it--too sweet for me--but it sounds like fun to make. :)

There's a Scandinavian cake which is layers of cake crumbs, redcurrant jelly and applesauce I used to make years ago. It's not too sweet (no icing) but quite tasty.

Thank you all for sharing in my nostalgia. Fun I was similar to that but I don’t recall a thick layer, I recall several thinner layers.

Better yet would be going to Bookwoman's Austrian bakery in NYC.

Alas, it closed in the '90s. It's probably a Baby Gap or something now. :-(

Little neighborhood patisseries in France used to have a humble pastry made of leftover/stale pastries and prepared into a kind of bread pudding pastry. I can't remember the name of it, but it was always the least expensive pastry on offer, and the flavor varied according to what was available.

There was a little German bakery in Columbus (Juergen's) that had all kinds of fabulous pastries. I don't specifically recall one with pastry crumbs but as many things as they made it could have been possible. How sensible from a business perspective of making money from the crumbs. The original reduce, reduce and recycle!

I grew up with a bakery owned and run by a German family about a block away and they had a very inexpensive spice cake, with orange buttercream frosting, that they sold in 8 inch squares or in half 8 inch squares....4 by 8 inches.
They told us ( when we asked why it was so cheap) that they took all the cakes and cookies that didn't sell, crumbled them up and used that as the "flour" in a spice cake. Don't know what they did with any frosting, because it was a very cake-like texture.....and very delicious!!
Maybe they used the buttercream and added lots of grated orange rind?

There is a recipe for a cake like this, albeit somewhat "deconstructed" in the cookbook "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest" by Mollie Katzen. Here's a link to a blog with a copy of the recipe.http://jennybakes.blogspot.com/2008/04/russian-coffee-cake.html

I remember when my grandmother would take a cake and crumble it up to create a lasagna type constructed sweet with jam and frosting between the layers. It was really good heavily chilled ... don't remember any liquor but that sounds really good ...