Dump Cakes for Busy People!
Dump cakes are for busy people. Busy people who like good eats! And if you keep the three (count ‘em, three!) ingredients on hand that you need to make them, when potluck time comes around these dump cake recipes are sure to please, with a capital P!
A dump cake is ridiculously easy and fool-proof. It’s the go-to dessert everybody loves and asks for second helpings. It’s the one you can throw together in minutes because all you do is dump fruit, cake mix and butter (well, you don’t dump that, you drizzle it) into a pan and bake for just under an hour.
The Pioneer Woman, that sassy red-headed Ree Drummond, admits right up front there is nothing good about a dump cake – except the taste. It’s full of sugar and packed with fat and while she may feel guilty about posting the recipe, she says it “shore as shootin’” tastes great.
Ree uses canned cherry pie filling and crushed pineapple – one can each – and mixes the two in an 11 x 9-inch glass pan. After you sprinkle yellow cake mix (she says it tastes even better than white) over the top and smooth it out, you take a whole stick of butter and cut it into pats to spread across the cake mix.
The fruit in the bottom combines with the butter on the top and gives the dry cake mix all the moisture it needs to produce a nice crispy cobbler-like top. And it’s so potlucky! Just don’t forget the whipped cream!
Some home chefs, like Sabrina who blogs for Dinner then Dessert adds crunchy chopped pecans to the cake mix before she bakes it – 45-60 minutes or so in a 350º oven.
Fresh Fruit Dump Cakes
The Epicurious version of a dump cake requires a few more ingredients, but it’s still as easy as pie – easier, even. Combining frozen peaches (frozen = juicier!), fresh blueberries, sugar, vanilla extract and ground cinnamon, the magazine chefs use a boxed cake mix (also yellow!) and one and a half (!) sticks of unsalted butter. And blogger Katherine Sacks goes one step further in the prep work and shakes the pan once the cake mix is sprinkled in. It helps the dry ingredients cover everything and makes sure the pan-full of deliciousness is evenly baked.
Because lots of people love and grow their own rhubarb, we found a Rhubarb Dump Cake recipe from This Grandma is Fun. Grandma sprinkles a cup of sugar over her rhubarb, with strawberry jello! On goes the cake mix and a cup of water, followed by melted butter. Even if you don’t grow your own rhubarb – the grocery store usually carries it in the produce or frozen food section.
Dump Cake for Chocolate Lovers
Jamie at My Baking Addiction has a soft spot for dump cakes and came up with a Banana Split Dump Cake for a little different taste treat. Layering fresh strawberries, pineapple and banana on the bottom of a baking dish, she adds banana pudding and lots of chocolate chips. There are one or two more ingredients, like sugar and milk, and, of course, whipped cream for serving.
And for the busiest cooks, check out Jonathan Watson’s column in the Times Record for Microwave Dump Cakes! He has recipes for 13 different dump cakes including Pumpkin Caramel (save that one for fall?), Luscious Lemon, Raging Raspberry and Black Forest. But don’t make too many of these or you’ll have to get down to the Pinnacle gym or hit the trails to burn off some of those calories!
Cakes for Goodness’ Sake in Crystal Valley
We suspect there are plenty of cakes being made in the master-planned community of Crystal Valleywhere home chefs celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, weddings and mitzvahs! Find yourbrand new home in this Castle Rock communitywith amazingamenities, in one of the beautiful modelsand move-in ready homes from Richmond American Homes, Kauffman Homes, Century Communitiesand D.R. Horton. Builders here offer ranch and two-story designs, priced from the $300s.
