How to Make a Pie . . . That Turns Into a Cake

Much to my husband's chagrin, I often experiment with recipes. Sometimes they are failures, but not to the point of becoming inedible. I recently made him Mountain Dew jelly with success so I thought I would use the same principles to make a pie out of Cherry 7-Up. Here is what happened . . .

I used iced animal cookies but I think graham crackers or vanilla wafers, etc would work too. I like to use what I have leftover and substitute when needed. I used about 2 cups of the small iced animal cookies.

I then added 3 tablespoons of melted butter and 2 tablespoons of sugar to make a crust.

Stir the sugar, cookie, butter mixture.

I would say "press the mixture into your pie pan" but guess what . . . this is when the recipe that started out good first through me for a loop so don't worry about pressing the "crust" into the pie pan, it will all eventually float up and become part of the batter.

Next I was going to make a Cherry 7-Up gelatinous good-stuff mixture so I took a 2 liter of leftover Cherry 7-Up that was half full (so one liter) and began to boil it.

Next I added 2 cups of sugar, dissolved the sugar in the soda and brought to a hard boil.

You can probably skip this step if you want . . . it didn't help my mixture turn into jelly for a pie like I hoped and I see no other reason to need it for the recipe. But if you want to be a masochist and explore this recipe to the fullest torturous experience, go for it.

After you boil the sugar, 7-Up and Pectin for a couple of minutes, Pour the mixture into the prepared pie pan and get ready to be disappointed. All of the cookie mixture/crust is going to float to the top and you are going to think, "Great! Now it is totally ruined!" Do not fret, the pie can still be saved! Put the mixture into the refrigerator and chill it for a few hours. After a few hours, take the pie out for inspection- no need to panic even though only the top centimeter has set and the rest is a rolling ocean in a pie pan . . .

If you are like me, you are impatient and want to just get this over and either chalk it up to success or failure. Go ahead and add a carton of whipped cream and bottle of marchiano cherries to the top and put it back in the fridge overnight. Maybe in the morning it will be set. After all, you did stick your finger in the mixture for a taste and it tasted pretty good so no need dumping it in the trash and covering it up so that your hubby can give you the evil you-wasted-food-again eye.

The next morning you are going to open the fridge and think, "Disaster!". However, the recipe can still be salvaged and turned into something delicious. Here's how:

In a large bowl, combine:
2 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Dump in the contents from the pie pan and stir. Divide the batter into two round cake pans that have been sprayed with cooking spray or that have been buttered and floured. Bake at 350 degrees for one hour. You will get a super-moist pie-cake.

After you let the pie-cake cool completely you can frost however you desire, either with store-bought stuff or a homemade recipe. I decided to make a coconut frosting and used:

4 cups confectioner's sugar
1 stick butter
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon coconut extract

I blended it with my hand blender and spread it on the 2-tier cake.

I topped my pie-cake with leftover blueberries but cherries might work well if you wanted to call it Cherry 7-Up pie-cake.

The end result is a super-moist cake that I hate to say resembles fruit cake but it does because it is so heavy. A small serving will go a long way . . . and this is how you turn a pie into a cake!