Cherpumple

If you have over twenty-five people for a pot luck you need big food items like a turkey or full ham, lots of sour cream baked hash browns or cabbage slaw. When I saw the recipe for Cherpumple credited to Charles Phoenix the American authour and pop-cultural humorist, I knew I just had to make it for our annual Christmas party. You take prebaked pies, cherry and apple in my case, and enclose them in cake batter and that's it. It was simply delicious. When I explained how to make the recipe, listeners would say, "you mean you put a baked pie into the batter?" Foreign thought.Charles Phoenix coined the word Cherpumple because he used a CHERry pie, in PUMpkin cake batter and an apPLE pie. You could use a blueberry pie, raisin pie or any other filled pie. I choose to go with the original. I had two concerns: first I did not have a 9 inch layer baking pan and secondly, I hoped I would be able to find the 8 inch pies at SuperStore. I never buy these pies and did not know if they would be available. My neighbour and friend had the 9 inch pans (believe me you have to have the pan this size) and SuperStore had the pies.

First make the cake batter.

21/2 cups of all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cup milk
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 8 inch baked apple pie
1 8 inch baked cherry pie

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease the 9 inch cake pans. Sift together the dry ingredients. Set aside. Beat the butter, slowly add the sugar (his recipe called for 1 and 1/2 cups of sugar but I decreased it to 1 cup). Add the eggs one at a time. In another bowl, mix the milk, pumpkin and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients alternately with the wet ingredients. Spread one quarter of the batter into a cake pan. Invert one of the pies onto the batter. Remove the foil pie plate. Spread another quarter of the batter on top of the pie. Cover the pie completely. Repeat this with the second cake pan. Bake for 40 minutes. Cool.

Frost with Truffle Cream Cheese Frosting
1/4 cup butter
1 8 oz package of cream cheese
3 cups of icing sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla.
1 cup white chocolate melted in 1/2 cup whipping cream, chilled

Beat the butter, vanilla and cream cheese together till fluffy. Slowly add the icing sugar and drips of cream. Just to add flavour and because I already had melted white chocolate (about 1 cup)in 1/2 cup of whipping cream left over from a batch of truffles I had made, I added this mixture to the icing. Now we are talking about being out-of-this-world. I do not know what I liked best - the cake or the icing.
Everyone had a piece of the cake and thought it was terrific. It is terrific because it is an 'out-side-of-the-box' type thinking cake. Innovative and over the top.