Diary of a Wimpy Cherpumple
"You've got to remember the number one rule of baking a cherpumple: never fret. Things will be OK."
This coming from my husband who previously asked me if we needed to grease the cake pan...
The evening was not without its difficulty, but in any case, should you want to try this at home, follow along and learn from our experience.
First, bake your pies. I opted for the cheater version because I didn't want to encase the fruit of my labor in cake. Make sure that your pies are a maximum of 8". (This is important, but I can tell you that crust covered in cake batter is a treat all its own.)
Once your pies are baked and cooled, assemble your remaining ingredients. You can see that I included a sample of holiday beverages. These are not for the cherpumple, but for the cherpumple bakers. (And no, no one is getting any of my Christmas Ale.)
Mix your cake batter to box directions. Grease and flour a 9" cake pan. Pour 1 to 1.5 cups of batter in the bottom of the pan and plop in the pie. If you didn't listen and get a small pie, you'll kick yourself and then have to cut the crusts off like we did. (See above note about crust in batter...yum.) Put more batter on the pie and around the pie. Keep in mind that cake batter rises and DO NOT fill it to the top. Chances are it'll bake over, so put it a on a foil-covered sheet unless you're the kind of person who loves to scrub an oven, in which case I have a filthy one that is need of some TLC.
Bake it at 350 for a long time. At least 30 minutes.
...and when you pull it out you'll notice that the top doesn't bake very well. The pie must not transfer heat well or something. Says brilliant husband: stick it under the broiler. And while that did work on layer #2, layer #1 was scorched because I was busy making layer #3.
When I started smelling smoke, I ran to the broiler and opened it to find what must be the Cajun version of the Cherpumple. I whisked it outside and there we let it cool down a bit.
From there, we baked two other layers.
Did it work? Check back and find out.
This coming from my husband who previously asked me if we needed to grease the cake pan...
The evening was not without its difficulty, but in any case, should you want to try this at home, follow along and learn from our experience.
First, bake your pies. I opted for the cheater version because I didn't want to encase the fruit of my labor in cake. Make sure that your pies are a maximum of 8". (This is important, but I can tell you that crust covered in cake batter is a treat all its own.)
Once your pies are baked and cooled, assemble your remaining ingredients. You can see that I included a sample of holiday beverages. These are not for the cherpumple, but for the cherpumple bakers. (And no, no one is getting any of my Christmas Ale.)
Mix your cake batter to box directions. Grease and flour a 9" cake pan. Pour 1 to 1.5 cups of batter in the bottom of the pan and plop in the pie. If you didn't listen and get a small pie, you'll kick yourself and then have to cut the crusts off like we did. (See above note about crust in batter...yum.) Put more batter on the pie and around the pie. Keep in mind that cake batter rises and DO NOT fill it to the top. Chances are it'll bake over, so put it a on a foil-covered sheet unless you're the kind of person who loves to scrub an oven, in which case I have a filthy one that is need of some TLC.
Bake it at 350 for a long time. At least 30 minutes.
...and when you pull it out you'll notice that the top doesn't bake very well. The pie must not transfer heat well or something. Says brilliant husband: stick it under the broiler. And while that did work on layer #2, layer #1 was scorched because I was busy making layer #3.
When I started smelling smoke, I ran to the broiler and opened it to find what must be the Cajun version of the Cherpumple. I whisked it outside and there we let it cool down a bit.From there, we baked two other layers.
Did it work? Check back and find out.
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