Eyeing the remains of his family's meal, Mr. Phoenix noticed everyone took a sliver of each pie—cherry, pumpkin and apple—and some cake. "I was inspired," he says, "to combine all my family's traditional holiday desserts into one."
Bake pies according to instructions and cool to room temperature overnight. Mix cake batter according to instructions. For each layer pour about 1 1/3 cup of batter in the cake pan. Carefully de-tin the baked pie and place it face up on top of the batter in the cake pan. Push down lightly to release any trapped air. Pour enough batter on top to cover the pie. Bake according to box instructions. Cool and remove from pans then frost it like you mean it.
Days later, the 47-year-old Los Angeles resident created a "cherpumple," a three-layer cake with an entire pie baked into each layer—a cherry pie baked inside a white cake, a pumpkin pie baked inside a yellow cake and an apple pie baked inside a spice cake. He stacked the layers and sealed them with a coat of cream-cheese frosting.
Mr. Phoenix made a YouTube video of his experiment, and a star was born. "It both intrigues and horrifies people," says Mr. Phoenix, who collects photos from bakers who have attempted to make the cake. It "puts the kitsch in kitchen."
Need a new Thanksgiving recipe? Charles Phoenix, inventor of the cherpumple, a cherry-apple-pumpkin-pie-cake, demonstrates how to make one in a video he made last year.
Julie Van Rosendaal from Calgary, Alberta, made one for an October dinner club with friends, where each was to bring a dish. The meal's theme was the seven deadly sins.
Her cherpumple was gluttony. "We had it on the table, and it just looked like a regular cake," says Ms. Van Rosendaal. But when the 40-year-old food writer sliced in to reveal the pies baked into each layer, she got "oohs" and some "eeews" from her friends. "People were not only disgusted by it, but wanted to eat it, too," she says. "I think it could totally catch on."
Diana Schubert of northern Virginia found that diners at a party she catered with a cherpumple "enjoyed the total spectacle," but few tried to finish a slice. "I think they just wanted to try to taste all of the different layers," says the 41-year-old podcaster and blogger, who uses the pseudonym Vivid Muse. Her husband finished a slice and says he got a bit of a stomachache.
Making a cherpumple properly can take three days, because each component must cool before being baked into another. The baker pries each cooked pie out of its dish and plops it into a cake pan, then smothers it in cake batter and slides it into the oven again. Mr. Phoenix suggests adding green or pink food coloring to the frosting to make it seasonal.
Pies are heavy and have little structural integrity in their mid-sections, so many cherpumples fall apart. "The physics of it provide a kind of 'will or won't it collapse' situation," says Mr. Phoenix. "But if your cherpumple does collapse, you can act like it was meant to happen and serve with spoons." When Mr. Phoenix, an author and humorist, made a cherpumple recently in Denver, the "cake collapsed into a big mound, kind of like a volcano with three different lava flows." He blames the altitude.
Getting the center of the top of each cake layer to bake sufficiently can be a challenge, since the inner pie blocks much of the heat. Laura Gudde, who works in sales for an ink company in Columbia, Mo., checked hers in the oven with a toothpick. "Everything looked normal," she says. "But when I went to get the cake out of the pan, it gooped up like it wasn't cooked all the way through....It made a pretty big mess."
There are variations on the theme, such as the cherberryple, which replaces pumpkin with blueberry. The Flying Monkey Patisserie in Philadelphia in October began selling a version without the top (and most unstable) cherry layer, dubbed simply the pumpple cake. Flying Monkey says its pumpple has 1,800 calories in an $8 slice designed to serve four. Owner Elizabeth Halen says she sells out in a few hours most mornings. Still, "numerous people feel the need to tell me how disgusting it is, too," she says. "I don't know why, and I don't care. I am a baker, not a health-food nut."
Other food artists have adapted the theme to their own work. Megan Seling, a 30-year-old Seattle writer, concocted a cupcake last Easter baked around a Cadbury Creme Egg. It landed on ThisIsWhyYoureFat.com, which chronicles high-calorie foods. Then Ms. Seling heard of the cherpumple from a friend. Making a whole cherpumple would be expensive, she figured, so she baked a miniature cherry pie into a chocolate cupcake. It was a hit with friends, so she set up BakeItInaCake.com, where she began posting recipes for cupcakes with baked-in treats such as tiny pumpkin pies, baklava and donuts.
"This is taking the cupcake trend to a ridiculous—but also, hopefully, delicious—level," she says. After inventing dozens of new cupcakes, Ms. Seling and her boyfriend each gained about five pounds, she says.
Many cherpumplers say they're drawn to the challenge of combining foods that don't normally go together. Brian Driscoll of Sandusky, Ohio, made a single-stack pie-cake recently and plans to go for the full cherpumple at a Thanksgiving meal with friends. Themed around layers, the menu also includes a turducken and a layered bean casserole. "Once we set our minds to something like this," he says, "we are going to see it through."
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