Adventures in Picaken

I read the blog. I understood the warning. I did not heed said warning. Jamie over at The Very Worst Missionary was posting about stumbling onto picaken. Her husband demanded she make it for his birthday once she showed him the concept of it. Because Jamie is super funny, you should know that I was giggling out loud while reading this post. (and you should also go read it because she's waaaay funnier than I could hope to be!)

So Thing1, who can never do without being in on a joke, began peering over my shoulder and giggling as well. Then he said the same thing that Jamie's husband said: "I want that for my birthday!"

Since Thing1 is turning the monumental double-digits soon, I couldn't refuse. However, I was hesitant to try it for the first time on his actual birthday. I didn't want to try it for just our Tribe though because what if it was not so great and I had a big ol' lump of picaken laying around for weeks because after all the work I couldn't throw it out???

Easter... The perfect solution. With the extended Tribe who would be honest with me (I hope).

If you haven't left my blog to go read The Very Worst Missionary's yet, I will tell you that picaken is akin to "turducken". Turducken is a duck, stuffed inside a chicken, stuffed inside a turkey. Often served at Thanksgiving... Picaken is a pie baked inside a cake!

You start by baking a pie. I think this is so the crust isn't mushy? And so the filling in the pie is good and cooked (you'll understand this later).

I am L.A.Z.Y. Because I wasn't sure this whole thing was going to work out too well (despite reading otherwise), I didn't want to spend a bunch of time on a home made pie. Now that I've done it, I still don't know that I want to spend the time. Publix frozen blueberry pie. Baked for one hour. Then cooled and stuck in the fridge.

Next I mixed up the cake batter. Really - is there a large portion of the population who makes cake from scratch? If there is, I'm not one of them. This is Duncan Hines Vanilla Cake Mix (Bogo @ Publix). 

Then I poured a few cups worth into the bottom of this mega-pan I bought where they sell the foil pans at the grocery store. It says it was 10 inches round, but it was about 3 inches tall (at least).

The next part is very scary. You get your pie and turn it out upside down in your hand...

Pose for a picture.... and dump it into the cake batter in that pan...

I really think if I hadn't stopped to get the "action shot" that my pie would not have broken into the batter. Woops. I was momentarily stressed but then got over it. This is the "practice run" after all.

Next you pour the remaining batter over top of the pie. See why I didn't want to make a pie from scratch?? All that work is buried in cake batter!

Then you bake it. I put it on a foil lined cookie sheet because I was afraid of spillage. I baked it for a bajillion years. Seriously. 350 degrees. I put it in the oven for 50 minutes and it was still liquid on top. 25 more minutes and it was not quite all the way there. 15 more minutes and I pronounced it done. I was also afraid the exposed top of the cake would be burned if I kept going much longer. I'm really not a baker so I could be wrong... so 90 minutes and it was close enough to call it done. This is why I think you bake the pie before dumping it in because there's no way the middle could have gotten cooked enough.

After cooling the cake for another bajillion hours (overnight, because I have to sleep at some point) I dumped it out and it looked like this:

Only a little bit started to "leak out". I iced that sucker with 2 cans of icing. (You're not surprised I didn't make the icing from scratch, I hope).

Then I took it to our Easter lunch with the extended Tribe.  The slices held together quite nicely!

And we still got to take home half of it. I really think that it would have been tasty with lemon cake, but I don't like lemon cake (even though it is my bff's fave). Unless they lied, everyone liked it. Yay!

Guess that means I'll have to make another one in about 6 weeks. He wants coconut cake. Not sure what kind of pie to put inside of it. I'm sure you are all on the edge of your seat waiting to see what sort of picaken I do next. (or not)