The Muffin Tin Hack You Need To Reinvent Bread Crust Scraps

If you're a parent, you've likely mastered the art of neatly cutting the crusts off several PB&J sandwiches at speed to avoid the ire of a ravenous toddler. While these leftover scraps can be whizzed up into breadcrumbs to avoid waste, there's an even tastier way to reinvent your bread crusts. All you need is a muffin tin, a glass, and a dollop of garlic butter to transform those irregular scraps into a swanky batch of garlic bread swirls. 

Begin by cutting the crusts off your bread in one seamless piece so you have a single long length. Then roll these scraps into a coil shape so they look like a pinwheel and place them snugly in the base of your greased muffin tin. Next comes the fun bit — take a glass with a base that fits the diameter of the holes in your muffin pan and use it to press down firmly on the pinwheels, shimmying it around a little. The pressure will flatten and squash the coils together, thereby helping them to retain their spiral shape. Place a generous blog of garlic butter on top of each pinwheel and spread it over the surface area of the bread, to guarantee it becomes crispy, golden, and aromatic once cooked. Finally top each garlicky coil with a sprinkling of shredded cheese and bake in a preheated oven until bubbly to create a dozen invitingly cheesy morsels (depending, of course, on how many PB&J sammies you assembled earlier!).

The best thing about this simple technique is that you don't need to limit yourself to using garlic butter on your crusts. Any variety of compound butter will work from a herby recipe featuring dill, parsley and lemon, to a spicier version that incorporates 'Nduja sausage. In fact, adding a protein to your butter can elevate your baked spiral snacks, into a full-on dinner when combined with a fresh salad featuring beans and greens. You could also experiment with adding a layer of marinara to the pinwheels before topping them with a couple of baby mozzarella balls to create fun mini-style pizza toasts with an appetizing cheese pull — drizzle over a splash of infused garlic oil and you have a delectable appetizer on your hands. Better yet, make a sweet cinnamon butter with brown sugar and top your spirals with pecan nuts or a streusel topping to make a bite-sized drool-worthy dessert.

Whatever you do, bear in mind that the key to making any of these recipes is to firmly flatten your bread scraps under your glass, which is why it can help to use a metal muffin tin over a flexible silicon variety. This will guarantee that the crusts meld into a single slender piece that lines the base and sides of your muffin tin, creating a shallow crispy cup.