Making a Pake

Back in July, my eyes were opened to the existence of something called pake. A cake with a pie inside of it! Could this mythical baked good actually exist?

Well, I couldn't think of a better time to find out than during the salute to gluttony known as Superbowl Sunday. And since there was no recipe - just a photo to work from - I knew this would be an adventure.

My first piece of advice in making a pake is to invite some friends over. This is not a feat you should attempt alone.

So, you start with a cake. Two cakes, actually. Because essentially what you're doing is using the pie as the filling in your layer cake.

Then you bake a pie. I'm going to come right out and admit that I used a frozen pie. I felt that the level of difficulty of assembling the pake was high enough that I could cut corners on the pie.

In addition to being easy, the advantage of the frozen pie was that it I could easily remove it from its pie tin (cuz you can't put the pie tin inside the cake). However, I was worried about baking the pie without the tin, so I lined the tin with parchment paper, thinking I'd be able to simply pull the pie out after it was baked...this was true, it easily came out of the tin, but I ended up with a pie sitting on parchment paper, sitting on the bottom layer of cake.

With the help of no less than three friends (we took turns handling the pake and strategizing on how to handle the pake), I managed to pull off a series of flipping maneuvers that produced a correctly compiled cake-pie-cake pattern, but it wasn't pretty.

Next comes the frosting. I used buttercream, but a lighter whipped frosting would have been a lot easier to work with...also, you need more than you think you do - especially if your pake looks anything like mine and you're hoping to cover it up its flaws.

And once it's frosted: Ta-da! It's pake!

Unless you've been practicing, the pake is probably kind of a mess, but guess what? This is not a beauty contest! The pake is all about the joy that comes from eating a pie in a cake, not from looking at one. And let me tell you, it's good.
Mine was cherry pie in a chocolate cake, but I'm already imagining the possibilities.

I'm also imagining ways to actually bake the pie inside the cake. Not sure how to make that work, but I'm definitely willing to try...after I recover from this pake.