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This archival content was originally written for and published on KPCC.org. Keep in mind that links and images may no longer work — and references may be outdated.

KPCC Archive

Charles Phoenix's amazing holiday dessert - The cherpumple

You too can attempt to make the ginormous cherpumple cake pie.
You too can attempt to make the ginormous cherpumple cake pie.
(
Photo courtesy of Charles Phoenix
)

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Charles Phoenix's amazing holiday dessert - The cherpumple
Charles Phoenix's amazing holiday dessert - The cherpumple

The holidays are a time for baking wonderful, calorie-laden desserts. Southern California's King of Retro, Charles Phoenix, has dreamt up a culinary concoction that is sure to amaze your guests, if you can pull it off - the "cherpumple monster pie cake!"

Growing up, Phoenix's mom would make cherry, apple and pumpkin pies each Christmas. And inevitably, everyone would wind up taking a slice of each. And so Phoenix thought, why not make it easy and combine all three pies in a humongous cake?

Watch Phoenix make it in a test kitchen in Ventura:

"It's the dessert version of the turducken," says Phoenix, referencing the holiday tradition of cooking a chicken, inside of a duck and putting that inside a turkey. Phoenix has dared folks at home to make the dessert (which he also calls the love child of Sara Lee and Betty Crocker).

Not everyone has been able to make the behemoth dish quite as successfully as Charles Phoenix...
Linda Maley sent her Cherpumple attempt, which she calls the Chernobyl Cake. "I fully intended to make the Cherpumple, got all my ingredients together and went to town," Maley writes, "Unfortunately I ended up in a wasteland. What came out of the oven would be a perfect Halloween dessert!"

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