Carrot Cake Sundae with Salted Toffee Sauce & Candied Pecans

An absolutely insane way to use up leftover carrot cake! I often have cake trim leftover from leveling sponges and making them into ‘soft serve’ style ice cream is my new favourite thing! This can be done with any leftover cake but since I had carrot cake, I paired it with a rich salty toffee sauce and some brittle crunchy candied pecans. Absolute heaven!

If you just want to use up the leftover cake and don’t want anymore cooking, just make the ice cream and crumble up a biscuit on top with some nuts. It will still be so delicious, although I am partial to drinking this toffee sauce with a spoon!

Ingredients - serves 4-6
Candied Pecans:
100g whole pecans
65g caster sugar
10ml water

Salted Toffee Sauce:
100g unsalted butter 
200g soft dark brown sugar
15ml black treacle 
135ml double cream
3/4 tsp flaky salt

Carrot Cake "Soft Serve":
2 x 480g tubs of good-quality vanilla ice cream
250g carrot cake trimmings

Method:

For the candied pecans:
Prepare a baking tray lined with baking paper or a silicone mat. Place the water and sugar into a shallow saucepan over medium heat. Once the syrup has come to the boil, add in the pecans and stir vigorously. Continue to stir until all the nuts are coated in syrup. As you continue to stir, the syrup with crystallised and go dry and crumbly. Lower the temperature slightly and continue to cook, while stirring, until all the sugar has melted and turned into a deep caramel around all the nuts. Tip the candied pecans out onto your prepared baking tray and break them up into individual pecans as best you can using a spoon. Please be careful as they will be hot! Leave to cool completely. 

For the toffee sauce:
Place all of the ingredients into a saucepan, apart from the salt. Set the pan over medium heat until the butter has melted and the sauce comes to a boil. Remove from the heat and leave to one side until needed. This can also be refrigerated and rewarmed when needed.

For the carrot cake soft serve:
Place your sundae glasses into the freezer as well as a piping bag fitted with a large star tip piping nozzle, if you are going to be piping the ice cream.

Place the ice cream into the bowl of a stand mixer fitting with a paddle attachment. Break up the carrot cake and add into the bowl. Mix the ice cream on the lowest setting until everything has been combined and your ice cream is smooth. Spoon the ice cream into the cold piping bag.

Drizzle the toffee sauce into the chilled sundae glasses. Chop some of the candied pecans and sprinkle them in. Pipe in your carrot cake softserve and top with more warm sauce and whole candied pecans. If you have any biscuits around, these crumbled on top is also delicious. Enjoy!