Huzzah! It’s time for my annual pumpkin recipe. All year long, I hoard pumpkin recipes like a dragon hoarding gold. I weigh the pros and cons of each: Does it contain oodles of real pumpkin? Is it portable enough to carry to holiday gatherings? Does it keep well for breakfast on the day after Thanksgiving? Does it smell good while it’s cooking? Does it have plenty of pumpkin spice? And is it easy enough that a child could bungle it just as well as I can?
Have you heard of piecaken? That’s a pie baked inside a cake. I’m not spinning astonishing tales of fantasy desserts here. It is a real thing, allegedly created by pastry chef Zac Young of PieCaken Bakeshop in New York. The original piecaken is a many-tiered Frankenstein with a bottom layer of pecan pie, middle layer of pumpkin pie, top layer of cake and apple pie filling, surrounded with cinnamon buttercream frosting. And when I say pie, I mean the entire pie, crust and everything. See for yourself at piecakenbakeshop.com. (In case you’re insatiably curious, piecaken in a variety of seasonal flavors can be shipped anywhere in the country. It’s exactly this kind of thing that makes America great.)
In my humble opinion, why ruin a good piece of pie with cake? It’s pure ostentation. Call me old fashioned, or maybe just old, but pie should be enjoyed one slice at a time, one after the other until you’re as stuffed as the turkey. That’s how regular people have eaten Thanksgiving pies for generations upon generations. It’s tradition. It’s practically law. For some dessert warriors, however, piecaken is the equivalent of conquering the world.
If you shy away from the pompous piecaken but are still attracted to the idea of combining dessert types, I’ve got a more demure mash-up for you. Instead of a pie inside a cake — how pretentious! — why not simply put pumpkin pie filling on top of cake? Sadly, there’s no elegant way to combine the words “pie” and “cake,” so I give you — pumpkin cake-a-pie (aka pumpkin butter cake). It’s fun to say (cake-uh-pai) and it’s much better than pumpkin pike, am I right? There’s a bottom layer of spice cake and a top layer of pumpkin cream-cheese custard. If you have Thanksgiving guests who like pie and cake equally and hate having to choose — let’s call them “undecided voters” — this bipartisan dessert is sure to delight them.
Heat the oven to 350 degrees and butter a 13-by-9-inch baking pan. Vigorously stir together the spice cake mix, two eggs, 1 teaspoon vanilla and 3/4 cup melted butter. You might worry about the butter cooking the eggs but I never bother to cool melted butter and everything blends just fine. However, if this troubles you, please ignore my directions and do it however you like. I do not want anyone to suffer scrambled egg cake batter on my account.
Spread the mixture evenly in the pan and set aside. This is challenging because it’s a very thick, sticky batter, but if you grip your spatula firmly and with determination, you can nudge the recalcitrant batter into every corner of the pan.
Using a hand mixer or stand mixer, beat one package of cream cheese until smooth. Add three eggs, 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice and 1 tablespoon vanilla and beat until thoroughly combined. (I like a whole lot of spice and vanilla, dial it back to 1 or 2 teaspoons if you prefer a subtler flavor.) Mix in a can of pumpkin puree and half a stick of melted butter. Add 21/2 cups of powdered sugar and beat until very smooth. Pour the pumpkin mix evenly over the cake batter.
Here is where I strayed off the path to pumpkin perfection. I baked the cake-a-pie for 40 minutes, but when I took it out of the oven, the middle was still a bit sloshy. I put it back in for another 10 minutes, and then another 10, at which point the pumpkin was cooked but the cake was cinnamon-spiced drywall. Each bite was a duel in my mouth. The pie layer was so good and the cake layer was so bad, it ended in a draw every time. Turns out you can eat a lot of cake that way.
Some jiggliness in the pumpkin layer is fine but a lot of jiggliness means it’s not done. Unfortunately, the toothpick test doesn’t work here because the pumpkin layer doesn’t set until it’s completely cool. Be flexible with the bake time but don’t take it as far as I did. Use your instinct and allow it to come to room temperature or speed things up by chilling it in the fridge.
Serve your cake-a-pie with whipped cream and a cup of strong coffee. If this is a season for gratitude, be grateful that dessert is something we can all endorse.
Pumpkin Cake-a-pie
Bottom layer:
One 15.25-ounce box spice cake mix
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
¾ cup butter, melted
Top layer:
One 8-ounce package cream cheese
3 eggs
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
1 tablespoon vanilla
One 15-ounce can pumpkin puree
4 tablespoons butter
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
Heat the oven to 350 degrees and butter a 13-by-9-inch baking pan. Combine the cake mix, 2 eggs and 1 teaspoon vanilla and melted butter. Spread the mixture evenly in the pan and set aside. (It’s a sticky, tricky batter, but just use a firm hand with a spatula and get it into all the corners.) Beat cream cheese with a hand mixer or stand mixer until smooth. Add 3 eggs, pumpkin pie spice and vanilla and beat until smooth. Mix in the pumpkin puree and half a stick of melted butter. Add powdered sugar and beat until smooth. Pour evenly over the cake batter in the pan. Bake 40 to 50 minutes or until the center seems set — that is, a little wiggly, but not sloshy. It will firm up as it cools. Serve as you would pumpkin pie: topped with a generous dollop of whipped cream.
