Use Crushed Cookies in Your Next Crumb Cake

The love for cupcakes is rooted in my family. You may know it’s coffee cake, streusel or, as my father calls it, crumble buns, but whatever the name, I want a slice. Inexplicably, I hate topping crumbs. Beating the dough for a cake is fine, but the mixture of sugar, flour and butter intended for the top of the cake annoys me to no end. Instead of fiddling with it, I crumble the cookies and sprinkle them on top.

Coating your cake in cookie crumbs isn’t the same as coating it in a thick layer of brown sugar you’ll find on a New Jersey crumb bun, but it creates a similar effect with a few bonuses. The classic crumble filling uses a lot of butter and brown sugar, and you might not have enough of either if you’re baking on a whim. Making a one-ingredient cookie crumb topping allows you to use any cookie you have in your pantry without adding butter, sugar, or flour.

While regular crumble is flavored with cinnamon, using crushed cookies means you can change the flavor profile with white chocolate macadamia cookies, graham crackers, chocolate chip cookies, gingerbread cookies, peanut butter cookies, or oatmeal cookies with raisins. Alternatively, you can use crumbs to make a streusel-like ribbon. Add a layer of fine cookie crumbs to the center of the dough and it will absorb some of the moisture from the mixture and soften into a fragrant strip that runs through the cake. (I do thrive on going too far.)

You can add cookie crumbs to cake, loaf or cupcakes. I made banana bread with ginger crumble and a layer of streusel in the center. I used the fine crumbs from the bottom of the container and crushed about six more cookies in a food processor to get half a cup of crumbs, but you can use any crushing method you prefer, including your hands or a rolling pin. If you don’t want the center stripe, skip it; this is completely optional. For the top, I casually broke another handful of cookies into about a cup of medium to small pieces.

To assemble the sponge cake, prepare the batter as usual and pour half of it into the prepared pan. For the center strip of cookies, sprinkle the dough with an even layer of fine crumbs. Cover the crumbs with the other half of the dough and smooth evenly. Scatter the remaining small crumbs along with the larger pieces all over the cake. Bake in preheated oven according to your recipe. Halfway through baking, cover the pan with foil to keep the cookie crumbs from browning.

My gingerbread box banana bread baked proudly and stretched the crumb layer, making some pretty eye-catching holes in the filling. The cookie layer in the center was spectacular. Small crumbs completely softened and combined into a beautiful and tasty strip. With nothing but the best form for eating crumbs, I make sure to get every bite of the soft pie with the crunchy, sweet gingerbread filling. This is harder to do with a piece of bun, but that’s what the center layer is for. I really want to try this again with fruit cake and lemon biscuits, and I encourage you to play with the combinations, letting your pantry of half-eaten biscuits be your guide.