Pie-Cake

So far my greatest masterpiece!  I'm quite proud.  It turned out way better than I had thought.  I was still playing around with my vanilla cake recipe, so I decided to make the centre that cake.  I also decided to make cherry pie, because it looks nice and lumpy.  The first challenge was to carve the cake into the shape so it fits perfectly into the pie pan, but instead, I just figured I'd use the pie pan.  I used disposable 9" round pans.
The 9" pie pan took about half the batter, so the rest I used to make cupcakes and a rolled cake.  I could have cut the recipe in half in retrospect, but I didn't know how much I'd need, so I used full recipe.  It cooked pretty much just like my 8 1/2" round cake pans, which is nice because cook time was predictable.  When it was done I took it out and let it cool int he cake pan.

The next trick was getting it out of the pan.  The top of the cake was over the rim of the pan and it was kind of stuck, so I took a fork and gently pulled the cake in towards the centre of the cake to release it all the way around because I didn't want it to break.  Once it was loose all the way around I turned it upside down but it was pretty stuck so I did the next best thing.  Considering its a disposal pie pan I cut through the rim of it and peeled it off half at a time.

Next step was to roll out my fondant that I had coloured with "ivory" colouring (perfect choice).  I roll it out on wax paper because when I roll it nice and thin I find it hard to transfer without ripping.  I used a new 9" pie pan.  This is pretty much exactly like laying out pie pastry (which I was never good at).

The next step I didn't take a photo of, but with the cake portion upside down I smoothed on a thin layer of butter cream icing on the bottom and sides (to help the fondant stick), I then carefully flipped the cake right side up into the fondant pie crust in the pan.

Now the next part is where it starts to come together and look really neat.  I coloured some of my butter cream icing red using the red GEL food colouring.  I iced the top of the pie-cake with the red icing making sure not to get any onto the "crust".  When it was smoothed, I added some drained maraschino cherries (I dried them with a Scott towel first to get off the excess liquid).

Next I rolled out another piece of fondant to use for the top.  I made sure that it was at least 10" in diameter so it would cover the cake.  I then trimmed the excess fondant off the sides and pressed the 2 layers of fondant together.

I made the teardrop shapes I commonly see on pies (used as vents in actual baking of pies apparently).

Next I broke out the other food colouring gels I have along with water, a paintbrush, icing sugar and a clean Scott towel.  I put just a drop of chocolate brown colouring on a plate  and added some water and icing sugar (water to make it go farther and icing sugar to re thicken it so it wouldn't run).  I went around the edge of the crust brushing the colour lightly around the edge, went around a second time with a bit darker right on the very edge (because it bakes darker usually). 

After, I went over the main part of the pie with a damp Scott towel dipped in the colouring..  I used a scrap piece of the fondant I had cut off to test the colour before putting it on the pie, because I didn't want to mess it up.  Yet again, I made the little bumps over the cherries a bit darker, because they commonly bake darker as well (but not much, I tried to make it quite discreet).  Lastly, I noticed that the red icing wasn't quite as red as I would have liked and didn't look very cherry like, so I took the red food colouring gel and put a drop on the plate and painted it very carefully into the teardrop shapes on the cake to make it jump out more and it worked nicely, it gave it a much deeper colour..

Here is the cut cake when we served it.  To make it look more realistic when cut, I could have coloured the cake batter red so it looked more like cherries all the way through but I'm not a huge fan of excessive food colouring in my food, so I left it out.  The whole point is it looked awesome and tasted just as good, most people thought it was actually a pie.  Sadly my pies don't ever come close to looking this good.  Oh well..  That is the sage of pie-cake.  Now in the battle of pie and cake and people debating which is better, I have answered the question..  Pie-cake is best...

***I added the fondant recipe I use to the "icings" section found on the right tab.  Note I wrote out the recipe, then added some notes at the end.  I messed it up my first time doing it and it's not a quick task to make fondant..  Best made the night before unless you have a lot of spare time.