Remember in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when Violet Beauregarde chews gum that is a three-course meal? Now swap a cake for a piece of gum, and you'll come close to understanding the all kinds of crazy that is this cornbread layer cake that has been iced with mashed potatoes, drizzled with gravy and topped with fried chicken. The cake is the creation of Los Angeles-based baker Bree Miller, aka Bree's Cakes.
Model Chrissy Teigen appreciates food—we reported how she loves herself Taco Bell and has her own amazing Doritos trick—so it didn't come as a surprise to us when we caught her posing with this incredible creation.
The origin of the cake was incredibly random: Miller was challenged by a friend on a whim. "He texted me a photo of a dish that was more like a casserole and asked if I thought I could recreate something like it with my own twist," Miller says. "I was like, 'heck yeah. Challenge accepted.'"
To make this beast, Miller baked the cornbread like she would a normal cake, and then iced it with the mashed potatoes, using her trusty angled spatula, when the potatoes were still hot.
"I just treated the potatoes like they were buttercream icing," Miller says. "It was difficult because I couldn't touch the cake because it was burning hot. I also had to move really fast because once the mashed potatoes started to cool, they started to fall off the cake."
To make the dish look more cake-like, Miller added borders by putting the potatoes in a piping bag and drizzled gravy down the sides. Miller first made it for her family, and then shared with her friend, rapper The Game, who suggested she add macaroni and cheese and candied yams.
"The cake morphed into three layers of cornbread with a layer of candied yams and a layer of macaroni and cheese, which was still iced with mashed potatoes and topped with fried chicken. I dubbed it The Soul Cake. It tastes awesome. It's like a whole meal in a slice of cake. I've gotten a lot of mixed feelings about it, but if you have all those foods touching on a plate, you're going to eat them together. I think people were confused because it looked like a cake, but it's not dessert."
We think Willy Wonka would approve.
