A Pumpkin Pake

Pumpkin Cuppake with a little bit of whipped cream on the side, sprinkled with a bit of cinnamon

      Well, technically, they are pumpkin cuppakes- cupcakes wrapped in little pieces of pie dough instead of the usual paper wrapper. Fair warning, this recipe makes for one heck of an awesome carb-filled biteful.
    For those of you who remember my first foray into baking a pake- it was a blueberry pie with a sour cream cake, aka a blueberry pake- I did it for the sake of Drop Dead Diva. They now have a recipe on their site for those wishing to make a pake, but all the ingredients are canned or come from a box (lame!) So, I set out to make another wonderful pake, this time with fall flavors in mind. My dad and mom came to visit last weekend, so I made these treats in my dad's honor since he loves pumpkin pie. And as much as I rag on the Lifetime recipe for not being "from scratch." I am not a total glutton for punishment, so I did use store bought pie dough and store bought canned pumpkin (if you want to make your own, feel free- I've done it in the past and it is delicious, if time consuming.)

A Blueberry Pake

   In the last month or so, I finally decided to move to Houston, TX (shout out to my brother Chris!) So I have been thoroughly busy deciding what to take instead of making anything new. However, I had the day off on the fourth of July and I wanted to bake! I wanted something "American" - and I had a lot of blueberries just waiting to go bad before I could eat them all- so I immediately thought of making blueberry pie. I mentioned this idea to my boyfriend, who said, "oh I hate pie, I like cake better" and that blueberry pie dream was killed. Of course, I never really love fruit pies myself and I know how much work they take (hello lattice crust: my worst nightmare), so I wasn't entirely mad at my BF for pointing his preference out.

But what else could I make?
Of course, of course! A Pake!

    If anyone else out there is addicted to Drop Dead Diva, they will immediately know what I am talking about since Stacy's Pakery has been in the plot-line for the show for a while now.  For all those others though, a pake is a pie recipe mixed with a cake recipe. If you search for "pake" on google, you will get a fully made pie inside of a cake (aka too much work). Instead, my pake has a pie crust and the bottom half is fruit filling; the top half is a sour cream cake. Goodbye need for a lattice top.