a tale of piecaken…

A couple of weeks ago, my friend, Alexa, posted about a hilarious and almost ridiculous recipe called *Piecaken*. Piecaken, is the brain child of missionary and blogger, Jamie http://www.theveryworstmissionary.com. Basically, she had an epiphany to dump a whole baked pie into a spring form pan and poured cake batter over the top. She baked it. She frosted it. All that was left of her Piecaken was crumbs. The rest is history.

If you are a foodist snob and believe that pie or cake is good enough, you need not read any further.  Why would anyone bake a pie inside of a cake? Good question. But, just as I was told by my mom, don’t knock it before you try it OR bake it.

I baked a loose version of Jamie’s Piecaken this weekend. I baked a perfectly fine, sacrificial Dutch Apple pie.  It was the perfect golden color with a generous cinnamon streusel on top. I hated the thought of digging into it, but I took a leap of faith and dropped it by the dollop-full into my baking cups. For the cake part, I used a box of yellow butter cake mix from Betty Crocker.
Anyone who was here for dinner on Saturday night can tell you – they were ridiculously, even outrageously delicious. They were best when just out of the oven – like a fresh baked muffin with warmed preserves baked inside. I scarcely had a chance to frost them before they were devoured!

So, i you’re interested in joining the Piecaken movement, here’s a couple of helpful steps below.  It’s so easy to make, you don’t even need a recipe!

1. Get a pie. Any 8-inch pie will do. Store bought, from the bakery…no matter, the Piecaken does not discriminate.

2. Make cake batter. It can be from scratch, it can be from a box.

3. Prep your cake pans (two 8″ rounds or one 9″ spring-form pan or sixteen cupcake liners) by greasing and flour them.

4. Place a small amount of batter in the bottom of the pans (1 cup for baking pans, 2 tablespoons of batter for cupcake liners)

5. Here comes the pie! I would divide an 8″ pie in half and place each of the halves into both cake pans.  For the cupcakes, I used a cookie scoop full of pie for each. If you center the pie, it helps with testing for done-ness. I used a toothpick on the side of the cupcakes.

6. Pour remaining cake batter to the 3/4 full mark on cake pans and cupcake liners. Take care not to overfill.  The cake batter should rise while baking.  Over-filling will create an irritating mess in your oven!

7. Bake cake according to recipe.

8. Frost Piecaken after it’s completely cooled.  Chances are you will have already eaten a few by the time you get to this step!

Here’s a couple of final thoughts on Piecaken.  I’ve been pondering some cake/pie combinations to try out in the future:

chocolate cake + key lime pie*

lemon cake + cherry pie

strawberry cake + strawberry rhubarb pie

vanilla cake + chocolate silk pie*

* in pies which feature meringue, I suggest omitting the meringue.  Because meringue is made from whipped egg whites, baking it will result in turning the meringue into liquid.  If you’d like to include the meringue, I would suggest cutting down on the volume of wet ingredients in your cake mix so it’s doesn’t yield an overly runny center.

Many thanks to Jamie for the inspiration and to Alexa for daring me to bake it!

Happy baking!

Nancherrow