Funny Cake

Funny Cake (a cake baked in a pie crust, and therefore funny)

Ingredients

Unbaked Pie Crust (recipe linked)

Filling Lower Layer (Chocolate)

½ cup cocoa

1 cup sugar

½ cup boiling water

Filling Upper Layer (Cake)

1 cup sugar

½ cup shortening

1 egg

1 cup milk

2 cups flour

2 tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. salt

Making the Funny Cake

Preheat your oven to 350^oF.

While the oven is heating up, make the fillings for your pie crust (which you've already formed into the pie plate):

For the lower layer chocolate syrup, mix together the sugar and dry cocoa, and then add boiling water slowly, stirring to combine, but it will remain fairly runny.

For the upper layer cake batter, combine the sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt. Make a well in the mixture and break the egg, add the milk and the shortening. Mix all of it together until smooth (using a spatula to squash and distribute the shortening fairly evenly).

Pour the lower layer into the pie crust first, and then gently pour the cake batter on top of the chocolate layer. It will displace the chocolate syrup below, which is fine, but do spread the cake batter as evenly as possible. Some mixing will occur and the surface swirls will make for a lovely final product.

Place on the middle rack of the oven, perhaps covering the pie crust with foil to keep it from overbaking. Bake for 35 minutes. Test the cake batter for doneness with a toothpick and increase baking time by 10 minute increments until the cake is done and the toothpick comes out clean.

When done, the cake surface acquires a rich, brown appearance with some swirling from the chocolate mixing when the cake batter was poured in and spread, but the chocolate layer remains a secret until you cut into the cake, exposing well defined layers. The cake component puffs up well above the level of the crust, a consequence of the rise produced by the baking powder. The rise, and therefore lower density of the cake, causes it to float above the higher density of the liquid chocolate bottom, assuring the distinctive layering. We used only one cup of sugar for the upper layer, so the Funny Cake was not too sweet, but two cups can be used for a more cakey cake layer tor those with a sweeter tooth (the original recipe called for two cups of sugar).

A slice of Funny Cake is a very decent accompaniment to a hot cup of coffee. We baked one Funny Cake for our family during the Christmas Holiday and it did not survive 72 hours in our household. Everyone agreed that we should make more for future gatherings.

Read the Funny Cake Blog Entry

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