It's high summer. For kids, the novelty of no school has worn off, while for parents, the resumption of school remains far off.
Chances are, the list of diversions is running thin.
So imagine this scene:
Mom, what can I do? I'm sooooo bored.
Well, how about we bake something?
You mean Rice Krispies bars?
That's not baking. How about a piecaken?
Piecaken? Awesome!
If you've never heard of piecaken, it's exactly how it sounds: a pie baked inside a cake. The doubled-up dessert became a hot Thanksgiving trend a few years ago. Because, indulgence.
Consider it the inevitable sweet spawn of a turducken _ that mid-'80s invention of a deboned chicken stuffed into a deboned duck and then stuffed into a deboned turkey.
Oddly enough, Pinterest pages devoted to piecaken are not this dessert's best friend. Most photos show slices of cherry pie bleeding into white cake, crumbling messes of apple and chocolate, sagging stacks of berries and frosting. Thick pie crusts within fluffy cakes look like sheets of plywood amid insulation.
Our challenge was to elevate the piecaken to a dessert that nixes the crusts, tastes great and looks fabulous _ and is fun! After all, the lure of a piecaken is bringing what looks like an ordinary cake to the table, then serving up slices that provoke only one response: "Whoa, there's a pie inside this cake!"
We settled on peanut butter and chocolate as a classic flavor combo with particular appeal to many kids.
To sidestep the crust while still being able to lift and nestle a pie into cake batter, we invoked a curious creation from the 1970s called Impossible Pie. With roots in Southern crustless coconut pie, this version was popularized by our own General Mills using its Bisquick mix, which made a pie in which the crust and filling magically merged.
Made with crunchy peanut butter, our baked pie is easily transferred into a springform pan filled halfway with chocolate cake batter. Then it's covered with the rest of the batter.
Once baked and freed of the springform pan, the cake holds no clue that a pie lurks within. Finished with a glossy blanket of ganache and a ring of chopped peanuts, the resulting dessert is a looker.
But it also serves as a sort of summer school course, enabling young bakers to learn concepts of mixing thoroughly, cracking eggs confidently and measuring ingredients accurately.
Think of it as hiding some education inside of a yummy dessert.
