Now that school is in my kids think that I should be making a dessert every night. I can’t quite explain it because I have never done that before. At our house all of the kids know that if you are still hungry after you eat you can have fruit or vegetables until you fill up. They teenage boys do come back for a second dinner between 9 and 10 but they usually have a peanut butter and jelly with a piece of fruit or they make a frozen personal pizza (and the little girls are in bed anyway so they never see that extra meal happen).

I do try and make something fun for dessert about 2 to 3 times a week. This week I pulled out an old favorite. I have been making this cake for about 30 years (did I just age myself?). But I don’t think that I have made it in about 5 years.

Strawberry Jell-o Poke Cake

This cake is just about the easiest cake. The best thing about it – no frosting! I hate frosting. I always have to scrape it off of my cupcakes/cake at parties without people seeing me.

For this cake you need to make a plain old vanilla cake. I used a basic vanilla cake recipe that I use for cupcakes, but I just poured all of the batter into a 9 x 13 cake pan.

Ingredients:

1 cup white sugar (or sugar substitute; we use a substitute and it works great)

1 egg

1 tea pure vanilla

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup milk

½ cup butter, soft

½ tea salt

1 ½ cups flour (we use wheat flour)

1/2 cup frozen strawberries; thawed and blended

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream together shortening and sugar. Add in the egg and vanilla, beating until light and fluffy. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl. Take turns adding the dry mixture and milk into the creamy mixture. Stir in the thawed frozen blended strawberries.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes in preheated oven or until a toothpick comes out clean. You need to watch your cake. Every oven is different and will cook at various speeds. This particular cake came out a little darker than I would have liked but I think the strawberries that I added might have something to do with that.

Cool completely.

Once the cake was cooled completely I put it into a container that was lined in aluminium foil. The next step is to take a dowel or a sturdy skewer and poke holes all over your cake. I actually have a cooking dowel and I used that. So the holes in my cake might look larger than in your cake. I then went though and poked a few smaller holes with a large serving fork. I liked the end result.

Next mix a packet of strawberry Jello with 1 cup boiling water until dissolved. Once the powder is dissolved add 1/2 cup cold water and mix. Pour all of the mixture slowly and evenly over the cake. It might not look like it is getting in the holes, but it is. Next place the cake into the refrigerator for an hour or longer. Mine set in there for about 2 hours.

All you have left to do is frost the cake. Oh wait! Don’t use frosting. Whip up a little whipping cream and frost it with that! It is light and airy and delicious. I think that this cake would be strange with regular frosting, frosting is too think and dense. I also added some pink, white, and yellow sprinkle balls just to add color. Remember to refrigerate the leftovers. This one was gone in less than 2 days so I really don’t know how long it should last. As a rule at my house everything is thrown out in 2-3 days if not consumed.

I want to apologize for the pictures, they are not the best. I made this cake around 10 pm so I had to use the flash when I took the pictures. During the summer we keep some crazy hours at our house.