You'll love this customizeable recipe. If you don't care for canned cherry filling or chocolate cake, use apple pie filling or even canned peach slices in syrup with a yellow cake mix.
The Ingredients
serves 6 to 8
2 (21-ounce) cans pie filling
1 (15-ounce) box cake mix (we are gluten free, so that's what I use, but you certainly don't have to!)
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, melted (my butter is salted; it really doesn't matter)
1 tablespoon water
The Directions
Use a 4-quart slow cooker sprayed well with cooking spray. If you have a 6-quart and that's it, reduce cooking time by about a 1/3.
Dump out the pie filling into the bottom of your prepared slow cooker. (don't forget to lick the cans! that stuff is GOOD.) In a large mixing bowl, mix together together the cake mix, melted butter, and water. You're going to have a crumbly cake mix, but what you're really trying to do is to "wet" all of the powder.
(go ahead and eat a few spoonfuls of the mix. there's no eggs, and again, that stuff is GOOD.)
Pour this evenly over the top of the canned filling. Cover, and cook on high for 2 to 3 hours, or on low for about 4 to 5 hours. Uncover, and continue to cook on high for another 30 minutes or so to release condensation.
Enjoy!
The Verdict
Holy crazy mama, this is Uh.Maze.Ing. it's SUPER DUPER hot when right out of the crock--- be careful!
This sounds great. I think I would use a crockpot bag for this recipe.
March 21, 2014 at 1:11 PM
Ha ha! You bet your buns I'll be eating a few spoonfuls of the cake mix! Yes, I buy cake mixes, too. You're right, not every single thing can be some elaborate, gourmet production where you grow the cherries to make your pie filling and then put freshly churned butter into the cake. This is a perfectly good recipe and I'm glad you tried it out and showed us. Thanks!
March 21, 2014 at 2:02 PM
Thank you for trying this recipe out for me! I recently discovered that I have a problem with gluten, & I find the cake mixes too expensive to experiment with :-( & I've always loved dump cake, too! Now if you'll just check that "Cake Mix Turned Into Cookies Recipe" for me, that would be great! LOL
March 21, 2014 at 2:21 PM
The crazy thing is that these are the most popular types of recipes because hello we are all living real life and sometimes recipes with only a couple, easy ingredients is all we have time for!
March 21, 2014 at 3:06 PM
I have just discovered your website and I can not tell you how excited I was to actually see a box of Gluten-Free cake mix! I almost cried...I can't wait to give this a try for my Celiac Daughter...her birthday is coming up...it's on Easter Sunday!
Blessings,
Valerie Martin
March 21, 2014 at 8:31 PM
I'm happy you found me, Valerie! My nine-year-old has Celiac, too, so we all eat gluten free when at home. All the recipes on the site and in the books are made gluten free, but since most of my readers aren't, I try to keep my notes off to the side.
I hope this helps a bit! Happy birthday to your little girl!
March 22, 2014 at 7:15 AM
I am using home canned peaches or apples and a box of spice cake mix. We all try to make homemade when we can but lets face it we live in reality. I am thinking fruit cocktail would be yummy too...
March 22, 2014 at 12:44 PM
I used Betty Crocker chocolate g-f cake mix (the Safeway brand you used has soy flour, which I'm allergic to), three cans of no-sugar-added peach slices cut up, a stick of butter, 1 T water.... it was DELISH though it honestly looked a bit yucky. LOL I am not ashamed of gluten-free cake mix... the Betty Crocker mixes make really nice cake and they are reasonably priced without a lot of nasty ingredients.
March 23, 2014 at 6:09 AM
I read about you on Judy's Patchwork Times blog and followed her link to here. I do have a question. What brand/make of crock pot do you use. I have never seen one like in the pictures above?
March 25, 2014 at 7:13 AM
Hi Susan, I'm happy you found me! The pot in the picture is a Cuisinart 4-quart. I have quite a few pots in the house of varying sizes. These are the ones I recommend:
I hope this helps a bit! Sorry for the non linking link-- I'm on the phone!!
http://stephanieodea.com/store/#slowcookers
March 25, 2014 at 7:26 AM
I used the Pamela's brand mix and my cake was (can't believe I am saying this) too chocolaty. Weird. It would have been good with ice cream but we didn't have any. :-(
Still good.
March 25, 2014 at 1:05 PM
Just finished making mine and it's so yummy! I did it with strawberry pie filling instead of cherries. We are gluten free as well and I used Betty Crocker's devil food cake. I am going to try it out with some ice cream soon! Here's a link to my blog with photos :)
http://gannclan2011.blogspot.com/2014/03/gluten-free-strawberry-dump-cake.html
March 26, 2014 at 9:33 AM
This looks great! I am thinking of making it with lemon pie filling and (gluten free) vanilla cake mix. Thanks for sharing this! I had completely forgotten about "dump cake" :-)
April 5, 2014 at 12:13 PM
Throw a cup of pecans and walnuts across the top. Combos of spice cake mix, apple pie filling, small jar of caramel sauce and walnuts for the fall. Cherry pie filling, butter cake mix and pecans for the spring. Camping and pot lucks and nary a spec left. Yes, do use a liner. Love your blog!
April 6, 2014 at 7:43 AM
do you think this would work with coconut oil instead of the butter? Thanks.
May 24, 2014 at 9:56 AM
This looks amazing and easy...thanks for sharing!
November 19, 2014 at 8:44 PM
Used to make something similar whenever we went camping. I'd take a cast iron dutch oven. Pour cherry pie filling on the bottom. Top with chocolate cake batter made from a mix. The bake the cake in the campfire coals. We'd scoop it into bowls to serve. We mixed and matched fruits and cake flavors. Always a big hit, but chocolate was the favorite.
In this recipe, it doesn't sound like you are making the batter according to the package directions. If that's the case, I'd like to know why.
November 14, 2015 at 12:12 PM
Hi Sue,
Because I'm a rebel? ;-) Slow cookers keep all the moisture in the pot. It'd be too gummy if you added all the liquid the cakes require in a dry oven.
hope this helps a bit, steph
November 14, 2015 at 12:24 PM
Two cans of pie filling in the cake are too intense and sweet for me. I use one can of pie filling and either one can of plain fruit or an equal amount of fresh fruit (such as one can peach filling and one can plain peaches [drained], or one can cherry filling plus an equal amount of fresh raspberries). I find it perfectly pleasing that way. Substituting coconut oil (a previous question) should work very well. Generally speaking, I use butter and coconut oil pretty much interchangeably.
June 25, 2016 at 9:41 AM
I get cake mix and canned fruit at Dollar Tree!!!!!
June 25, 2016 at 7:45 PM