Name: Rachel
Posts by Rachel L:
The Dessert Turducken Challenge – Mission Accomplished
January 31st, 2011I love to bake. This is well known amongst my friends and former colleagues (one of whom is the brains behind this fine blog), so I was not surprised to receive several emails when the Wall Street Journal published a story about the ”Dessert Turducken,” paired with not-so-subtle requests to produce this delicacy.
A three-layer cake? No big deal. With an entire pie baked into each layer? Can’t be that complicated.
I undertook this challenge in honor of three friends’ birthdays. They each chose a layer:
Bottom: Pumpkin pie/chocolate cake
Middle: Cherry pie/funfetti cake
Top: apple pie/yellow cake
The recipe was fairly straightforward, but failed to mention that the pies would suck all the heat once covered with cake batter. (The first layer spent thirty minutes in the oven, but the batter on top of the pie refused to bake)
I finally scooped the unbaked cake batter into another dish to bake separately, knowing frosting would fix everything on the flip side. I did the same for the second layer.
Having run out of dishes, I decided to simply put very little cake batter on top of the final layer – it just barely covered the pie, but it worked.
I let the cake layers chill overnight so the frosting would spread easily. Halfway through slathering the beast with icing, I knew I was going to need more than the two cans I had purchased, so I whipped up some of my own. Naturally, I ran out of powdered sugar and had to throw in some cocoa, hence the two-colored decorating scheme.
Weighing in at twelve pounds, this baby was ready to be devoured.
