This cake was neither easy as pie nor a piece of cake. But it was a mini strawberry pie baked into a coconut cake.
This was a lot of work and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t know what I was doing. But this cake came to fruition, even though it took a few days.
How do I describe this cake? I liked my aunt’s comment that this is the dessert equivalent of turducken. The inspiration for this cake was the Pumpple Cake from Flying Monkey Bakery in Philadelphia, PA. I have never been to the Flying Monkey Bakery, but it’s on my to-do list. A quick Google search for the Pumpple Cake will reveal just how popular this cake is. It’s been featured on television, magazines, and food blogs quite a bit. Though I haven’t tasted the original inspiration for this cake, I was dying to try my own version.
I spent some time thinking about the flavors I wanted to work with. The Pumpple Cake, according to the Flying Monkey Bakery’s description is apple and pumpkin pies baked inside vanilla and chocolate cakes covered with vanilla buttercream. Now I’m not crazy about apple pie and I’m especially not crazy about pumpkin pie. And chocolate and vanilla cake? I can’t eat plain chocolate cake without throwing bacon in the batter.
My original plan was to bake a mini strawberry pie into a layer of coconut cake and a peach pie into a layer of lemon cake. But I didn’t realize the grocery store would be out of peaches on this particular day so my plans for the second layer were scrapped.
Okay, so here’s how I did it. The first step was to make the mini pie. I was using frozen pie dough to cut down on time.
Then I made some basic pie filling with chopped strawberries, sugar, water, and cornstarch.
The filling turned out a little soupy so I left some of the liquid behind when I filled the pie shell.
I topped the pie with a layer of crust.
I baked the pie about 3/4 of the way through, reasoning it would finish baking inside the cake.
While the pie was cooling, I prepped an 8″ pan with parchment using a technique I learned in cake decorating class. You can use this trick when measuring a raw square of parchment to fit inside a round pan. I just happened to be trimming down a 9″ parchment for an 8″ cake pan.
So you take the raw square or circle of parchment paper and fold into 8ths and position the point in the center of the bottom of the pan. Then simply tear off the excess.
As I learned in class, the parchment round doesn’t need to fit perfectly in the bottom of the pan. It just needs to cover the center of the pan where the cake is most likely to get stuck. Also, the parchment shouldn’t touch the sides of the pan or it will interfere with the cake’s edge once it’s baked.
Here’s the cake’s mise en place minus the 2 sticks of butter because I got eager and had already put it in the mixing bowl.
I was making this cake at my parents’ house where there’s a stand mixer. I don’t own one, so it was a nice treat to be able to bake a cake with one.
As you can see, the batter was very thick. I coated the bottom of the prepared 8″ pan with a layer of batter. I de-panned the mini pie and realized the bottom of the pie was very thin. I started to get concerned that the pie might fall apart inside the cake layer.
I placed the pie in the cake pan.
Once I filled the pan with the rest of the batter. I noticed some of the strawberry pie filling started to ooze out.
I flattened the batter out over the pie with a rubber spatula, concealing the leaked pie filling.
I thought the cake would bake in 25 minutes. It looked finished.
But when I tried to flip it out of the pan 10 minutes later, raw batter sloshed everywhere so I shuffled the cake back into it’s pan, but not without leaving a mess on the table.
And the pie seemed to shift around a little inside the layer.
So back into the oven it went and it baked another 20 minutes.
And it flipped out of the pan just fine this time.
After the cake cooled, I covered it intending to frost it the next day. But they I didn’t feel so well for a few days and the cake became overdue for some finishing. You could say I got lazy. I had an 8 oz. container of heavy cream in the fridge so I whipped it with 3 Tbs. confectioner’s sugar and frosted the cake.
The cake looked a little naked. It needed some sprinkles.
I have to say, it tasted pretty good. The outside of the layer was a little dried out, probably from the two rounds of baking needed in order to get the middle of the cake to set. I would like to try this method again base on what I’ve learned from this go around.
