Red Velvet Poke Cake

Yes, I'm at it again.

My slight obsession.

Ok, my huge obsession with poke cake seems to be neverending.

The idea for this one came when I was at Wal-Mart.

I managed to drag my little guy and husband along to the store on this occasion.

(Y'all have no idea how rare that is to have both of them along).

We were on the baking aisle and I looked at Gene and said, "What do you think of a Red Velvet Poke Cake?"

 He shrugged his shoulders and casually said, "Sounds good I suppose".

He obviously was not catching on quickly enough to my small moment of brilliance here.

I expected a "Well dang - that's the best darn idea I ever heard of for a cake!"

He and I are always on different levels of excitement at different times.

Then he asks, "What kind of pudding?"

You gotta give the man credit for at least understanding what a poke cake is.

Now that was the kicker. I had originally batted around with this idea using a White Chocolate pudding as the filling. 

But really, the icing on a traditional Red Velvet Cake is a cream cheese frosting.

So it had to something cream cheesy.

Well, dontcha know, Jell-O makes a Cheesecake flavored pudding.

Hot Dog! We're in business folks.

And the rest is Red Velvet history.

Oh, and by the way, Gene's excitement finally hit when he took a bite of this cake!

Never doubt the power of a Poke Cake.

Ingredients:

1 box Red Velvet cake mix

ingredients needed to make cake (eggs, oil & water)

2 (3.4 oz.) boxes instant Cheesecake-flavored pudding

4 cups milk

1 (8 oz.) tub frozen whipped topping, thawed

10 Oreo cookies, crushed (optional)

Directions:

Prepare cake mix according to package directions for a 9x13 cake.

Once cake comes out of the oven, allow it to cool for just a couple of minutes.
Then, with a wooden spoon handle or some other similarly-sized object, begin poking holes in the warm cake.

You want the holes to be fairly big so that the pudding has plenty of room to get down in there. 

Be sure to poke right down to the bottom of the cake.

In a medium bowl, whisk together dry pudding mix with 4 cups of milk.

Whisk until all the lumps are gone.

 

Pour pudding over cake. Taking care to get right into the holes as much as possible.

 Spread it all out and using the back of the spoon, gently push pudding down into the holes.

Put the cake into the fridge to set and cool (about 2 hours).

If you have anything hanging out in your fridge that is stinky, be sure to cover your cake. 

 Once your cake has completely cooled, spread on whipped topping.

Spread it out evenly over the pudding layer.

  If you haven't done so already, crush your Oreo cookies.

I just place mine in a ziploc bag and crush them with a rolling pin.

Leave some of the pieces big. It's nice to have a bit of a crunch when you eat the cake.

Spread crushed Oreos onto the top of the cake.

You can do this part immediately before serving the cake if you like.

This will ensure the cookie bits are crunchy when you serve it.

This cake needs to be kept refrigerated.
 

Then dig in!

Enjoy!

Printable Recipe Here

I have lots more Poke Cake ideas on here.

Be sure to check out my Banana Pudding Poke Cake (and many others!)