It’s all about crumbs--birthday crumbs to be exact. Birthday crumbs may sound like what’s leftover after you eat the cake, but trust me: These are arguably the best part of the cake. “They takes very little time to create, and will make a huge difference in your cake,” explains superior baker from New York City’s Milk Bar Store, Roman.

To make them, mix together your dry ingredients—cake flour is key here, along with both light brown and granulated sugar—with a neutral tasting oil to bind them. Oh, and sprinkles. Of course there must be sprinkles. Work the crumbs between your fingers, then bake in the oven. (The actual recipe and instructions from the Milk Bar Store is below.)

And what do you do with these tasty crumbs? Instead of a completely frosted cake, these crumbs become the main decoration. This makes the cake unique and easier to put together.

You frost a cake layer, then the crumbs are placed right on top of the frosting. Milk Bar Store likes to make a 3 or 4 layer cake; they ice each layer and sprinkle the pretty crumbs on top of the frosting, then add a cake layer, and so on. (See photo)

Milk Bar Store shares their birthday cake crumb recipe on line. Here it is for your baking pleasure:

BIRTHDAY CAKE CRUMB (yield: approximately 2 ¼ cups)

½ cup sugar
1 ½ tablespoons light brown sugar, tightly packed
¾ cup cake flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons rainbow sprinkles
¼ cup grapeseed oil
1 tablespoon clear vanilla extract

Heat the oven to 300°f. Combine the sugars, flour, baking powder, salt, and sprinkles in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and mix on low speed until well combined. Add the oil and vanilla and paddle again to distribute. the wet ingredients will act as glue to help the dry ingredients form small clusters; continue paddling until that happens. Bake for 15 minutes at 300°f.

Let the crumbs cool completely before using in a recipe or gobbling by the handful. Stored in an airtight container, the crumbs will keep fresh for 1 week at room temperature or 1 month in the fridge or freezer.

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These crumbs can do much more than adorn a birthday cake, by the way. They are so good that we even sprinkle them over ice cream. I’ve folded them into tapioca, pistachio, banana, and vanilla puddings. And I’ve compacted them into a pie plate and used them as a crust for no-bake pies. They really are amazing.

Yesterday I tried rolling sugar cookie dough balls into these crumbs and baking. The result was terrific. The crumbs added a delicious flavor layer to the cookie.

Then I tried filling sugar cookies with the crumbs. I placed a layer of crumbs atop a cut our sugar cookie round, then topped that with another cookie round and pressed the two rounds together. The results were really good. The flavor was different this time around because the crumbs didn’t get toasted as they did when the dough balls were just rolled in them.

A few other ideas? We like frozen, chocolate covered bananas. So I’m going to roll the chocolate-coated banana in these crumbs before freezing them. I’m also going to smush the crumbs into balls and roll them in melted chocolate. And finally, I’m going to keep them on hand to sprinkle into my vanilla Greek yogurt.

I can easily see that this secret to the best birthday cake ever is definitely going to become a pantry staple at our house!