What Exactly Is A Poke-And-Pour Cake?

If you're looking to make a sweet treat for a crowd, a poke-and-pour cake may be an easy way to create a unique and delicious dessert. Poke-and-pour cakes (also called poke cakes) add a little more flavor to every bite, thanks to an extra ingredient added in a surprising way.

To start, you'll want to prepare and bake your cake as usual. Then, once the baked cake has cooled for a few minutes outside of the oven, poke some holes throughout the top of it — now you see where the name comes from. The handle of a wooden spoon can be used for larger holes, or skewers can create tinier ones. Just make sure to poke through to the bottom of the pan so your added flavors can fully saturate the entire cake.

Then, choose a liquid filling to add to your dessert and pour over the top. The holes you just made allow your chosen filling to sink down into the cake, adding an extra layer of flavor and moistening the cake.

Some of the most common choices of filling to pour over pokes cakes include pureed fruits, Jell-O, instant pudding, and pastry cream. When opting for something that needs to be mixed with liquid, like Jell-O and pudding, you'll want to pour it on the cake just after mixing. Then put the cake in the refrigerator and allow the mixture to set inside its new home (the cake). If you want something a little richer, you could even melt some peanut butter, pour in some mousse, or add some sweetened condensed milk.

The versatility of filling options can make for some unique flavors in your bakes. For example, this carrot cake poke cake recipe utilizes cheesecake-flavored instant pudding mix to add some extra creamy sweetness to the carrot cake. Adding some strawberry Jell-O into a baked white cake could create a fruity strawberries and cream-like flavor.

Poke-and-pour cakes have been around since 1976 when Jell-O introduced the concept as a new and unique way to enjoy the gelatin dessert (and as an effort to increase sales for the company). The novelty of Jell-O salads had worn off from the 1960s, and the brand marketed poke-and-pour cakes as their successor.

The first advertisement from Jell-O suggested using a white cake base, allowing the colors of the liquid gelatin to create a vibrant hue before setting up. The successor to that first recipe came in 1981 when the Jell-O company released another idea: using pudding in poke-and-pour cakes instead of the Jell-O.

In the fifty years or so since the poke-and-pour cake's recipe first debuted, plenty of variations have found popularity online. The easy preparation combined with the nearly endless flavor combinations makes poke-and-pour cakes a fast and fun way to create some unique sweet treats.