Turn Your Crumbled Cake Disaster Into Adorable Mini Trifles

There are plenty of reasons why a cake may come out too crumbly to hold up on its own. Removing your cake from the baking pan before it's had a chance to cool could cause it to break and come out in smaller pieces. Batter problems — like overmixing, too little fat, or too much flour — can also affect the cake.

Of course, you can always try to "glue" your cake back together with frosting if the pieces are still large enough after the cake crumbles. But when the cake falls apart into too-tiny pieces, it may be best to transform it into a different type of dessert entirely. Fortunately, your frosting and filling won't go to waste if you use those cake pieces to make a trifle.

When turning your crumbled treat into a trifle, it's all about the layers. Lay your broken cake pieces inside of the trifle dish, then top it off with your desired fillings. Continue layering the broken cake pieces with the other fillings until the dish is filled.

Since every ingredient of the trifle will be layered together in one dish, the appearance of your cake matters much less than the taste. If your cake has crumbled into larger pieces, you may be able to line them up and layer them in for a larger trifle. Simply arrange the cake pieces like a puzzle so that they fill up most of the space in the layer. If you wind up with a lot of smaller cake pieces, however, it may be best to make several smaller desserts. Miniature trifles can be great for feeding a crowd at a dinner party, or for portioning out individual servings.

When it comes to deciding what other fillings to incorporate, you'll want to take the flavor of your cake into consideration. If you're using crumbled chocolate cake, you can make an ultra-chocolate trifle with chocolate mousse, chocolate pudding, or chopped-up pieces of candy bars. If you want something a little lighter and fruitier, try making a coconut berry shortcake trifle: Layer pieces of vanilla or angel food cake with various berries and coconut cream, topped off with whipped cream.

If you aren't a fan of trifles, there are a few other ways you can salvage your crumbled cake. To make some easy cake pops or truffles, simply toss the cake pieces into a bowl with a little bit of frosting, and mix until they can be rolled into balls and coated with chocolate.

If you want to transform that broken cake into a different dessert entirely, toss those cake pieces into your food processor. Then, mix the cake granules up with a few other ingredients before baking the mix in the oven to create cake crumb cookies. Then, you can serve up some sweet cookies for dessert and start your cake over from scratch.

The next time your cake crumbles before you have a chance to frost it, just grab a trifle dish to serve it in. The altered dessert will let you combine all the aspects of a layered cake while covering up the cracked and broken cake pieces.