When my friend Heather asked me what I wanted as a birthday treat, I told her I’d have to think about it. There are so many options, after all, that it’s a pretty big decision. Neither of us could have foreseen my choice or the adventure that it would become.
As you should with every big decision, I consulted an expert: my friend Aimee, connoisseur and lover of all baked goods. She took on the challenge of the birthday treat with gusto and it was a slow work afternoon when she called me over to her desk to show me the Cherpumple. What is a Cherpumple you ask? It is a monstrosity of a dessert created by humorist Charles Phoenix of Arizona. It is all 6 baked goods commonly asked for at his family functions slammed into one Turducken-style cake. More specifically it is a cherry pie baked inside of a white cake, a pumpkin pie baked inside of spice cake, and an apple pie baked inside of a yellow cake. These three cakes (all 9 inch rounds) are stacked on top of one another and covered in cream cheese frosting. If you Google it you will get a number of pictures and firsthand accounts of people making their own. It was quite the internet sensation when he first introduced it.
After seeing the Cherpumple, I was both amazed and frightened. But it wasn’t until reading this, a hilarious firsthand account of making one, that I really wanted to try it.
The great thing about this is that it’s easy to customize it to your tastes. There are plenty of types of pie and cake out there… you can use whatever combinations suit you. Heather, Steve, and I all had a big hand in making this cake a reality and we chose the following layers for our Razzpumple (we modified the name to fit our layers):
-Razzlebery Pie in Chocolate Cake
-Pumpkin Pie in Yelllow Cake
-Apple Pie in Caramel Cake
First off, I highly recommend buying premade pies, either frozen or fresh from the grocery store. I’d also recommend sticking to your basic cake mixes. This takes plenty of time to make without having to bake pies and whip up cake batter from scratch.
My second, equally important recommendation is that you use TALL round cake pans. We made the mistake of using a regular 9 inch round cake pan for the pumpkin/yellow layer and ending up cleaning burnt batter off the bottom of the stove. We used spring form pans for the other two and they worked like a dream.
So here’s how you make this.
1) Take your pre-baked pies and freeze them for a bit. Especially the fruit ones! Not so much that they are rock hard, but enough to allow you to cut into them and not have apple pie filling spilling all over the counter.
2) Remove the first pie from the tin and cut around the inside of the crust so you just have a crustless round pie left. You don’t have to do this step as the original Cherpumple had whole pies, crust and all, inside the cake. We just thought it would be tastier without all the extra crust.
3) Mix the first cake batter to box directions
4) Grease the bejeezus out of your cake pan. You don’t want this to stick!
5) Pour cake batter in the cake pan, just enough to cover the entire bottom of the pan.
6) Place pie in center of cake pan
7) Pour more cake batter over the pie. Now, don’t put ALL the cake batter on top. You should have leftover batter of each flavor. And you don’t need to put in enough batter to surround and cover the pie on all sides. The cake will rise and even itself out.
8) Bake until it’s done.
The last one is important because it takes quite a bit longer than a regular cake would. Plan on 40 to 50 mintues per cake (you can have more than one in the oven at a time if your pans fit). And for crying out loud, make sure the batter above and below the pie is cooked. Granted, we probably put too much batter on top of the pies, but we had a little chocolate batter mudslide when we cut into it. Delicious? Yes. Intended? Nope.
Repeat the above steps for all 3 layers, let the cakes cool completely and then just remove them from the pans, stack them (with a layer of frosting in between of course!) and frost all around the outside.
The assembly and logistics of this cake are pretty amazing. The Leaning Tower of Cake, if you will. Stack according to stability or it will not stand up to its own weight.
Our Razzpumple turned out amazingly well considering how daunting the task was. And considering Satchmo ate half the top layer :-P It probably took a total of 5-6 hours of baking and assembly time, which we spread over 2 days. And though you might think it sounds and looks not-so-appetizing, you’d be totally WRONG. Everybody loved it. It was a hit! And it really was delicious :-)
So here it is. My Ode to Gluttony and Indecision. The Razzpumple.
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