Pie Or Cake For Dessert? How About Both, In One Pastry?

Thanksgiving is over for 2016, but a peculiar leftover remains. The holiday dessert category now includes a mashup, or hybrid, known as the piecaken, a name that conjures up another Thanksgiving oddity, the turducken. The piecaken comprises a layer of pecan pie, a layer of pumpkin pie and a layer of apple upside-down cake, topped with cinnamon buttercream. Other incarnations feature fudge cake, peanut butter or cheesecake. The idea seems novel, but a baker in Minnesota has been turning out something similar for a while, but dubbed the "piesplosion." One version of it (the Black Forest) consists of cherry pie baked inside chocolate and red velvet cake.