Peek right into a Pennsylvania Dutch cookbook and likelihood is you’ll come throughout a number of recipes with amusing names. There are beef tongue cookies, rivel soup (a creamy soup with dumplings), and schnitz and knepp (pork with apples and dumplings), to call just a few. The silliest, although, could also be humorous cake pie, which you make by filling an unbaked pie crust with vanilla cake batter adopted by a runny chocolate syrup. Because the pie bakes, the substances within the filling “reverse” within the oven, leading to a light-weight, mildly candy cake with a crunchy marbled high and a thick chocolate sauce on the underside. Heat, buttery, and alluring, this quirky mixture is a cake and a pie multi function.

What Is Humorous Cake Pie?

Also referred to as humorous cake, humorous face cake, or humorous pie, the dish is certainly one of a number of novelty “cake pies” fashionable in Pennsylvania Dutch delicacies. (One other, Montgomery pie, pairs white cake with lemon-and-molasses syrup.) Native bakers declare that the pie’s title comes from its reversing layers, however as is the case for a lot of beloved regional recipes, everybody’s model barely differs. The truth is, the origins of the title even sparked a vigorous debate amongst readers of Allentown, Pennsylvania’s Morning Name newspaper.

Chatting with reporter Jennifer Sheehan in The Morning Name, historian William Woys Weaver theorizes that “humorous cake” could be an Americanized model of a Pennsylvania Dutch title, or that the recipe might need been developed to encourage the usage of cocoa powder. “[Weaver] did discover in his analysis that the oldest title for humorous cake is Cocoa Cake, most likely as a result of chocolatey layer,” writes Sheehan. “Because it will depend on powdered chocolate as certainly one of its most vital substances, there’s a distinct risk that the cake was invented to advertise a chocolate product.”

Humorous cake pie recipes did certainly seem on product packaging: A Forties commercial for Swans Down cake flour describes the confection as “the very lightest, richest one-egg cake obtainable,” and presents recipes for orange and butterscotch sauces to fill the pie. Like Pennsylvania Dutch shoofly pie, this dish started as a “breakfast pie.” Today, nonetheless, it is served for dessert, too, and I get pleasure from mine with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

5 Ideas for Making Humorous Cake Pie

Retailer-bought crust is ok. As a result of humorous cake pie includes making ready each a pie crust and a cake batter, I often streamline the method by reaching for store-bought pastry. However in case you have selfmade pie dough able to go or want to make your personal crust from scratch, that’s high quality, too. 

Maintain the crust chilly. No matter whether or not you’re utilizing a store-bought or selfmade crust, remember to chill the lined pie plate, which helps the gluten calm down and minimizes the chance of the crust shrinking because it bakes. This additionally helps maintain the butter as chilly as potential; because the dough bakes, the butter melts, creating little pockets of steam that produce a crisp, flaky crust. Historically, humorous cake pies aren’t blind baked. To stop the crust from softening whenever you pour sizzling syrup into it, I like to recommend briefly freezing the crust earlier than filling it. 

For simple pouring, make the chocolate sauce in a measuring cup. It’s one much less bowl to clean, and, not like a bowl, pouring from a spouted vessel lets you management the drizzle. Begin across the periphery and work inward, following the paths within the batter as you go. Although it isn’t mandatory, I like to recommend utilizing a silicone mini whisk, which bends and flexes to succeed in the underside edges.

Do not overmix. When mixing the batter, cease simply after incorporating the dry substances and when there aren’t any seen spots of flour remaining. Overmixing promotes gluten improvement, which might make the cake dense and hard when baked. 

Make a large number. Spoon the batter into the crust in large blobs, and don’t be concerned if the floor is uneven or the crust peeks via in spots. Then, path a knife via the batter to make it even extra uneven. All of this messiness creates valleys for the chocolate to settle, distributing it evenly throughout your complete floor of the pie and creating a fairly marbled sample.

 Cool barely earlier than serving—however not an excessive amount of. Permitting the pie to chill for half-hour creates the best texture and temperature for serving: Moist cake with gooey, heat (however not scald-your-tongue sizzling) chocolate sauce. Whereas the cake is sweet, this recipe is all in regards to the chocolate sauce, which thickens and soaks into the cake because it cools. As soon as the syrupy magic vanishes, it is gone for good, so remember to get pleasure from it when it’s nonetheless heat for the complete humorous cake pie expertise. In case you’re working in a cool or air-conditioned house with an ambient temperature 74ºF (23ºC) or under, I like to recommend lowering the cooling time to fifteen minutes.