Project Bake: Cherpumple Disaster

A week ago, I would have considered myself a pretty adept baker. 'Give me a recipe and I can make it,' I used to say. Suffice to say, I have been thoroughly humbled. I have been knocked down a few rungs by a recipe that is entirely from a box. Yes. I have failed a boxed recipe. Granted it's a very ambitious, creative, utterly rad box recipe {and I encourage all of you out there to attempt it}. I could go through all the different things we did wrong, but that would just take too long. But, I can tell you that if it ends up looking like a big pile of you-know-what, it'll still taste pretty darn good. 
{drum roll}
I give you.... 
{applause} 
The baking equivalent to the Turduken.
The Cherpumple Challenge was suggested to me by my brother, who wanted to make it for an early Thanksgiving dinner hosted by his friends. He wanted to make something utterly ridiculously awesome. So, I said, lets give it a try.

The Anatomy of a Cherpumple 
A three-layer confection consisting of:
Bottom layer: A pumpkin pie inside a spice cake
Middle layer: an apple pie inside a yellow cake
Top layer: a cherry pie inside a white cake
All smothered in cream cheese frosting
Note: the Heineken were strictly for baker hydration purposes. 
We should have noticed things were turning south when the first layer decided to erupt like Mt. Vesuvius.


Our masterpiece SHOULD have ended up like this:

INSTEAD, we got this:
See? FAIL on an EPIC scale. 
Luckily, everyone was laughing so hysterically, no one really seemed to care. 
And, yes, it tasted pretty awesome.  
Find out how to make your very own Cherpumple here
.