Instant Pot Dump Cake

This easy cake can be made with any fruit pie filling you like. We chose apple and it came out amazing! Now this is one of our favorite dessert Instant Pot recipes we’ve made, you can make it in any brand of pressure cooker you might have at home. 😉 (affiliate links present)

Instant Pot Apple Dump Cake

If you’ve never made our Apple Spice Dump Cake it is easy. All you do is you mix together a few ingredients, dump in your pie filling, cook and enjoy! We recently used white cake mix with blueberry pie filling and those flavors are delicious too.

Over the years we have tweaked this a time and again. I will say that apple is very much our favorite but of course the options are pretty endless. If you have a springform pan and really are craving something deep you can give our pudding cake a whirl too.

in Ninja Foodi

You can do the same thing below in your Crockpot Express or as a Ninja Foodi recipe too. The only difference with this brand is you use the lid that is not attached to pressure cook.

Ingredients

1. Pie filling – really the best is apple  or cherry pie filling
2. Box of cake mix – best one has been spice cake mix or homemade yellow cake mix works too
3. Egg added at room temperature

And a few cups of water are needed to steam it. We topped it off with  scoops with vanilla ice cream which slowly melted and added even more flavor. It’s pretty amazing….

Equipment

24 ounce (or so) oven safe dish & trivet to cook this using the PIP method. I will either spray the inside of the foil with nonstick spray or use non stick aluminum foil if I have it on hand. If you don’t have it it isn’t a deal breaker. It will just stick slightly to the top where the foil meets the dump cake.

Substitutions

The apple pie filling has quite a bit of moisture to it so unlike our traditional dump cake recipes I used an egg instead of butter. These are NOT dry at all and continues to cook while it is cooling. So if it looks a bit wet when it comes out not to worry. It will be perfect when it’s cooled.

We have also used yellow cake mix + a can of apple pie filling as seen below. It comes out a looser consistency than the spice cake mix and takes a bit longer too. You can make cherry pie filling dump cake this same way with that other flavor.

How to Cook Instant Pot Dump Cake

1. In a bowl make your batter with your cake mix and egg. Once incorporated, then add pie filling and fold together so it is combined well.
2. Pour water into Instant Pot which will allow it to steam.
3. Put a trivet at the bottom of your pot for the pot in pot technique to cook this.
4. Spray your oven safe bowl with non stick spray and add cake batter into dish.
5. Cover with foil so the condensation doesn’t make the top wet.
6. Set to pressure cook, high, set the timer for 25 minutes cook time or so with a natural release (don’t touch steam release valve).
7. Remove foil, and rest on a cooling rack so it can stiffen up and settle.  Serve topped with ice cream!

Whipped cream or ice cream works for the top of the cake if you wish, it’s plenty sweet as is though. If you were really against processed, I would follow our Instant Pot Apple Crisp recipe instead with fresh fruit.

Cooking Tips

Tips to remember are: allow the steam to naturally vs. a quick release. This will allow the cake to continue cooking and not fall. It needs a bit of time to stiffen and settle in too so allow some time to rest once it’s done. Spray cooking spray inside the cake pan for easier clean up.

What does pot in pot mean?

I have made this right in the pot as you see in this video but some said they had some issues with it getting stuck so the one below is using the pot in pot method. That means that the cake batter is in a pot, which is placed inside the inner pressure cooker pot to steam, not directly inside.

Leftover boxed cake mix recipes should reach room temperature and then stored in an airtight container in your fridge though. When you’re done making this you should try our other Instant Pot dessert recipes

• Our pressure cooker donuts are so fun
• We have a list of other easy dump cake recipes using fruit filling ideas of all kinds, instructions here are for the oven too

We never have leftovers but if you did you could put foil over the top and put into the fridge. Enjoy it within the next 2 days or so for optimal results and taste.

Not in order to serve it, most times they’re served warm. If you do have leftovers you should cover it once cooled and keep in the fridge. Since there is typically fruit inside it will spoil faster if not kept cold overnight.