Cherpumple Challenge

Cherpumple. What does that even mean?! Yeah, I asked myself that same thing when my husband sent me this link. Clearly I’m arriving a little late to this party considering this article was posted about a year ago, but this is the first I’m hearing about his culinary dessert phenomenon. And just how did I hear about it? My husband’s coworker presented the challenge to me.

So what is Cherpumple? It’s a triple layer cake with a pie baked into each layer. It seems to be the pastry version of the turducken (which I’ve actually had, btw, and it’s pretty good!). According to the WSJ article, Cherpumple is a cherry pie baked inside a white cake, a pumpkin pie baked inside a yellow cake, and an apple pie baked into a spice cake. It is then smothered in cream cheese frosting. Swoon! And who created such a wild and crazy dessert? None other than Charles Phoenix.

Those of you who know me know that I LOVE to bake pies, so this challenge is definitely in my ballpark. However, I see a couple flaws with this original recipe.

1. The use of frozen pies. No thanks. If When I do this, I’ll make my pies from scratch, crust and all.
2. The use of boxed cake mix. Again. Meh. I’ll make my own mix. It’s easy peasy.
3. Canned frosting. Yuck! I am NOT a fan of canned frosting. It tastes processed and plastic-y to me. I’ll make my own cream cheese frosting, thank you very much.

If When I do this, I might try different flavor combinations. I don’t know. We’ll see. I plan on doing this sometime before 2012, and I’ll definitely keep you posted on the super success or epic fail!

Have any of you been crazy enough to try this? What are you thoughts?

 

Cupcake Art

A friend of my mine shared this blog with me today, and I thought it was too cute to not spread the word!

Those cupcakes really do look too good to eat! Well, maybe not…
…but they are adorable! I have the cookbook Hello Cupcake! which shows you how to decorate your cupcakes in the cutest ways ever. This blog reminds me of that. Cupcake decorating intimidates me, and the only one I’ve come close to replicating is the s’mores variety. Here was my attempt:

They certainly don’t look as great as the ones above, but they tasted amazing! I didn’t use a full marshmallow frosting, which is why it kind of melted when I took the torch to it. Oh well, it was my first attempt, and definitely not my last. Next time, hopefully they’ll be prettier but still just as delicious.