The one...the only...the cherpumple!

 

A couple weeks ago my sister Heather found the dessert version of the turducken...the cherpumple! She sent the link over and her, my lil sis, and my mom decided that this is something that needed to be done. The cherpumple is all your thanksgiving desserts in one! It is a cherry pie baked in a white cake, a pumpkin pie baked in a yellow cake, and an apple pie baked in a spice cake all stacked on top of one another. Heather did a trial run, and it came out well, so we did our own version of it for Thanksgiving. 

Since Heather was going to her in-laws early in the day, the night before she made the cherry layer, and did a cherry pie in a chocolate cake. She thought they would be a little scared of it, so she'd bring most, if not all, of it back to my moms house. But, they liked it and it stayed with them, so we just had the two layer pumple. :)

In order to save time and our sanity, we bought already made pies and used cake mix, but if you wanted to go all out you could bake the pies and cakes from scratch, that was just too much to do with everything else. We ended up with an apple pie in a french vanilla cake and a pumpkin pie in a yellow cake. The process is pretty simple.

You need:

Pies
Cake mixes and ingredients to make them
frosting - we used cream cheese, but it is very very sweet, so feel free to do something else. Next time, we are going to do whip cream I think (and yes I said next time, as in we are going to make this monstrosity again!). We used 2 cans of frosting
9 or 10in round cake pans, having deep ones works out better - we used one that was pretty deep and another that was a standard size, and not all of the cake batter fit in the standard one.

 Isn't my baby sister so cute?!

You start with pies that are completely cooled. So, if you are baking the pie do it the day before and let it cool so you can remove from the pie pan. Preheat oven to 350. Prepare your cake batter as directed. Pour a couple cups of cake batter in the bottom of a round cake pan that is VERY well greased and floured. (Heather learned from the trial run that the cake and pie bottoms will stick to the bottom of the pan) Removed the pie from the pie pan. It seems like this could be tricky, but ours came out of the pan quite nicely..thank you Vons for making your pies easy out! :) We opted to remove the extra bit of crust that is around the edge of the pie. 

Place the pie on the cake batter in the pan. 

 

Mom's cute too!

Then, pour the rest of the batter over the top. Don't overflow the pan, if it doesn't all fit that is fine - just make some cupcakes, which is never a bad idea!

 

Put these on a cookie sheet, and put in the oven. Now, they take quite a long time to bake. Heather did hers for almost an hour and half, I think. We did these for just over an hour, and we thought they were done, but when we cut them we discovered batter that wasn't fully cooked on top of each layer. So, really be sure that it is cooked. Poke it lots with a knife or toothpicks. As you can see, ours overflowed...a lot...somehow though, Heather did not have that problem on either of hers, so we have been trying to figure out why that is...but as long as you have the cookie sheet the overflow is totally edible!

Let these cool completely, and then its time to get them out of the pan and frost them. As long as you buttered up the pan really well you shouldn't have a problem getting them out the pan. We did a double flip, so they ended up right side up on the platter and frosted away. 

 Can you spot where the pie is in there?!

Because there was a lot of cutting away extra cake, the frosting wasn't coming out very pretty. We could have just kept adding it to make it look nice. but in order to save some of our sugar intake, we stopped the frosting and let it be. :) It was my brothers birthday a couple days before Thanksgiving, and he always has a pumpkin pie for his cake. Well, we decided that this should be his birthday cake. So, we put the candles in it and he blew them out, but he refused to eat it. He did eat about half his plain pumpkin pie though. :)

This is a very thick beast, and was a bit awkward to cut, I can't imagine how to cut a full three layer one, but I'm sure that it can be done!

 And there is it to enjoy!