Rock a pie, baby!

Courtney Hirsch dipped cherry, pumpkin and apple pies into cake batter to make a sweet 14.6-pound concoction called the cherpumple! (photo by Christian Johnston)

As a part-time pastry cook and full-time foodie (and college counselor), I’m a faithful proponent of scratch baking, and the cherpumple — a three-layer amalgamation of frozen cherry, pumpkin and apple pies smothered with box-mix cake — tops my processed-food blacklist. I set out to master this cacophonous cake determined to confirm that Mrs. Smith’s and Duncan Hines creations run a distant second to anything homemade.

First, I slid each Mrs. Smith’s frozen pie onto a sheet pan, and 55 minutes later had three bubbling-hot pies. With them cooling on my counter, I progressed to making the cake layers that would house each pie. As I whisked the mixture, I cursed my decision not to buy an electric mixer.

I poured only half the batter into the pan, saving the rest to cover the apple pie, which I then smothered with batter, its mammoth size threatening to brim over the rim.

I set the wobbly concoction in the oven, twisted the timer for an hour and hoped for the best. Eighty-six minutes later, the first cake layer emerged firm, golden and the shape and weight of a deep-dish pizza. The apple pie was completely encased in spongy spice cake. Layer one was a success, and I eased through layers two and three before cooling them overnight. By morning, they felt sturdy enough to stand up to the challenge of being stacked on top of each other.

I placed the spice cake/apple pie layer on a cake plate and covered it with store-bought frosting, before placing the second layer of yellow cake/pumpkin pie on top and frosting that. Finally, I gently placed the white cake/cherry pie on top of that, being careful not to compromise the cake tower’s precarious structure. I finished the colossal, 14.6-pound, three-layer cake with ripples of frosting all around.

At last, I sliced out a thick slab and, with great skepticism, tasted a frosted morsel. To my astonishment, the cherpumple failed to be the unpalatable monstrosity I had expected, but rather a dense, decadent desert that’s shamefully delicious!