Cheesecake Dump Cake Recipe

A cheesecake dump cake is a fruit dump cake with cubes of cream cheese baked into it. Spread two cans of cherry pie filling in a 9x13-inch dish, scatter eight ounces of cubed cream cheese over them, cover with a box of dry yellow cake mix, pour three quarters of a cup of melted butter over the top and bake at 350°F for 45 to 50 minutes.

What a dump cake is

A dump cake is an American dessert like a cobbler with a cake-like topping, named for the way it is made: canned fruit or pie filling goes into the pan, a boxed cake mix goes on top, and nothing is mixed. Butter over the top turns the dry mix into a crust. The same article traces the name to a Duncan Hines recipe of 1980 and notes that it turns up in community cookbooks of the 1960s and 1970s.

The cheesecake version puts cream cheese between the fruit and the mix. It does not set like a cheesecake. The cubes soften into pockets of warm, tangy cream under the crust.

Recipe

Cherry Cheesecake Dump Cake

A cherry dump cake with cubes of cream cheese baked into it — pie filling, cream cheese, dry yellow cake mix and melted butter, layered without mixing. Twelve servings from a 9x13-inch dish.

5.0 (1)Print

Prep

10 min

Cook

50 min

Total

1 hr 20 min

Serves

12

Cuisine

American

Ingredients

• 42 ounces cherry pie filling (2 cans)
• 8 ounces cold cream cheese
• 15.25 ounces yellow cake mix (1 box)
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter (melted)

Instructions

1. Heat the oven to 350°F. Spread the cherry pie filling in a 9x13-inch baking dish.
2. Cut the cold cream cheese into 1/2-inch cubes and scatter them over the cherries.
3. Sprinkle the dry cake mix evenly over the top, breaking up any lumps with the fingers. Do not stir.
4. Pour the melted butter slowly over the cake mix, covering as much of the surface as possible.
5. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until the top is golden and the filling bubbles at the edges. Let the cake stand for 20 minutes before serving.

Nutrition

Calories:

440

Calculated from the ingredient quantities above using the USDA FoodData Central database, then divided by the number of servings. It is an estimate and will vary with the exact products you use.

Cheesecake dump cake needs cubes, not a layer

Cold cream cheese cuts into clean cubes. Softened cream cheese smears, and a solid layer of it seals the fruit off from the cake mix, which then stays powdery because no steam reaches it from below.

No mixer and no bowl are needed, apart from the one the butter is melted in.

The dry spots

The one thing that goes wrong with a dump cake is a patch of dry cake mix on top. Melted butter, poured slowly, reaches more of the surface than slices of cold butter do. If a patch is still pale and floury after 30 minutes, spoon some of the bubbling juice from the edge of the dish over it.

Other fruit, other cake mix

• Apple: two cans of apple pie filling, with 1 teaspoon of cinnamon stirred into the dry cake mix. A homemade apple pie filling works in the same weight.
• Strawberry or blueberry: the same weight of pie filling.
• Cherry and pineapple: one can of cherry pie filling and one 20-ounce can of crushed pineapple with its juice.
• Chocolate or spice cake mix in place of the yellow.

Warm, with something cold

Serve the cake warm, with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. Covered, it keeps four days in the refrigerator, and a portion reheats in the microwave in 30 seconds. The crust softens after the first day.

A fruit dessert with a crumb topping made from scratch is the apple crisp without oats. A cake that is stirred in one bowl is the plum cake, and for a baked cheesecake there is the honeybun cheesecake.