Easter Poke Cake
This Easter poke cake recipe is the perfect dessert for your Easter gathering. The moist cake is made with a box mix to keep it simple, topped with Cool Whip and decorated with festive sprinkles and candy.
Ingredients
- 1 package white cake mix
- 3 large eggs or egg whites, see note
- ½ cup vegetable oil
- 3 cups milk divided
- Three or four tubes of gel based food coloring we used pink, purple, and blue
- 3.4 oz. box vanilla instant pudding mix
- 8 oz. container of Cool Whip or frozen whipped topping thawed
- Sprinkles or Easter candy for decorating
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray a 9x13 glass baking dish with nonstick baking spray and set aside.
- Beat together cake mix, eggs (or just egg whites if using), oil, and 1 cup of milk until fully combined.
- Divide the cake batter evenly into three bowls.
- Tint each bowl of cake batter, adding just a drop or two of food coloring at a time and then adding more to control the color of the cake batter.
- Drop large spoonfuls of the cake batter throughout the prepared baking dish, rotating the colors. Use a knife to swirl the colors slightly - do not over swirl or the colors will become muddy and mixed.
- Bake the cake for 25-30 minutes, until the center is set and a toothpick comes out with just a few crumbs when poked in the center of the cake.
- Allow the cake to cool.
- When the cake has cooled most of the way, use the round handle of a spoon or a wooden dowel to poke holes all over the cake. Poke the holes about ⅔ of the way down into the cake, spacing ¾”-1" apart.
- Prepare the pudding mixture. Whisk together the instant pudding mix with the remaining 2 cups of milk. Whisk for 1-2 minutes until the mixture is fully combined and just beginning to thicken.
- Pour the pudding mixture over the cake and spread over the top, pressing the pudding down slightly while spreading so that it fills the holes.
- Place the cake in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to allow the pudding to thicken.
- Top the cake with Cool Whip and decorate with sprinkles or however you wish.
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Notes
Storage:
Cover and store in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. Cake can be frozen for up to 3 months (wrap well.)
Notes:
For a truly white cake, use only egg whites instead of whole eggs. The cake will rise, bake, and taste essentially the same. The slight yellow tint of the egg yolks in the batter may interfere with the colors when you are tinting the batter for the cake. However, we used whole eggs in our cake batter.
I like to use an ice cream scoop or a large cookie dough scoop to drop the batter into the baking dish. It makes it easy to dispense the batter from the spoon. If you drop smaller scoops of batter, don’t swirl the batter together. The smaller scoops will create enough color variety as is.
Vanilla pudding has a pale yellow tint, which makes a nice fourth pastel color in the sliced cake. If you use yellow as one of your cake batter colors, I would recommend using white chocolate pudding mix for a truer white contrast.
Nutrition
Serving: 10g | Calories: 172kcal | Carbohydrates: 25g | Protein: 3g | Fat: 7g | Saturated Fat: 2g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 3g | Monounsaturated Fat: 2g | Trans Fat: 0.2g | Cholesterol: 24mg | Sodium: 203mg | Potassium: 73mg | Fiber: 0.3g | Sugar: 15g | Vitamin A: 76IU | Vitamin C: 0.1mg | Calcium: 96mg | Iron: 1mg
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