I’m not a baker/cook/chef by any stretch of the imagination, but I (and I figure most of the world) love to try a new recipe
Picture by JDS
every now and then. A few weeks ago, a friend of mine had posted a link on his Facebook page about the Cherpumple. For those that haven’t seen or heard of the Cherpumple, it’s essentially a dessert version of the turducken (a chicken inside of a duck inside of a turkey). Chef Charles Phoenix had created the Cherpumple, which was an apple pie baked inside a layer of spice cake, a pumpkin pie baked in a layer of golden cake, and a cherry pie baked in a layer of white cake, all stacked together and smothered in cream cheese frosting.
I decided to make a version of this for Thanksgiving for my friend, Brian, the head chef at Restaurant 3 in Clarendon, as a “Happy Thanksgiving/Congratulations on Being on Bacon Paradise” gift. However, I don’t like cherry pie. It looks like guts and tastes strange, so I decided to create the Pecpumple: an apple pie baked into a vanilla cake, stacked on a pecan pie baked into a butter cake, stacked on a pumpkin pie baked into a spice cake, and covered in cream cheese frosting (frozen pies, boxed cake mix, canned frosting). In my mind, this was a simple feat, but as it got closer to go-time, I began to worry about the structural stability of this monster (guess that half a Master’s in Engineering didn’t help much). Common sense kicked in and reminded me that cake is generally crumbly and pie is generally gooey. These combined could easily make for a disaster, so I made the cakes denser by adding whole milk and eggs, and decreasing the amount of water added (I kept the oil and butter in because no one likes a dry cake).
The pecan-butter layer was first, since I failed to read the directions on Phoenix’s website and both the pumpkin and apple
Click for larger pics.
pies needed to bake and cool first. The process seemed simple enough; make batter, pour some batter in the pan, add pie, add batter, bake, cool, stack, frost, dive in. Nowhere in the directions mentioned how much batter to cover the pie with, so I ended up with a few smoke alarms screeching, and a nice circular design of batter on the bottom of my oven. Luckily, I was able to clean that with no issue and proceeded to bake each layer, each with less batter overflow. There was a ton of excess cake batter remaining, so I baked a couple of cakes for my office and friends while I waited for the layers to cool.
Obviously, each layer was quite heavy (pie inside of a cake- duh), and after carefully stacking the apple on top of the pecan on top of the pumpkin and quickly frosting each layer and sides, the Pecpumple was born. Except for that hole where the apple pie filling was oozing out (patched shut with a scoop of frosting), it was just as I pictured. It was a tower of happiness; of pies and cake and frosting and all-around deliciousness.
Welcome to the world, Pecpumple.
We brought it to the restaurant, where we would be having Thanksgiving dinner, and placed it in the refrigerator to set a little bit longer. When it was time for dessert, Brian and his sous chef, Sean, cut the masterpiece. One word: glorious. Actually, if I’m being honest, the one word would be “shocked”. The Pecpumple stayed together and didn’t look like the result of a food fight between Betty Crocker and Mrs. Smith. And it was delicious. Very sweet, of course, but a great combination of desserts, and a nice switch-up from the usual pumpkin or sweet potato pie that is synonymous with Thanksgiving. Would I do this again? You bet. Should everyone try this? You bet. Will you get a little stabby when the crust on the pie burns and you have to shave it off with a knife because your oven is old and cooks uneven? You bet. But you laugh and move on. They always say that nothing that’s ever worth doing is ever easy, and this is something that is definitely worth doing. And if it ends up collapsing or imploding, oh well, you now have six desserts smashed into one, so grab a fork and dig in.
The first slice of the Pecpumple. Eat your heart out, world.
-Guest Blogger Janet (JDS)
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