Piña Colada Poke Cake

After our recent trip to Florida, I am desperate for warmer weather more than ever.

However, check back with me by the end of July and I'm sure I'll be complaining about how hot it is and I can't stop sweating.  Hee Hee.  I'm fickle like that.  I'm pretty sure if I could find a place to live where the weather was always 72 degrees and low humidity, that would be like paradise. But knowing me, I probably wouldn't appreciate it after a while because it would always be the same every day. I love blue skies, but nature needs rain.
And sometimes we need a little rain and grey skies to help us appreciate those blue skies.
 That is true for more than just the weather, no?

Well, we can pretend like we are having warmer days by making food and drinks that scream warm air and sunshine.  Like this Piña Colada Poke Cake. 

It has all the flavors of that yummy mixed drink (minus the alcohol).

Now, if you'd like, you could certainly add a bit of rum extract to it but I'm feeding a little guy and I'm thinking he doesn't need to know what rum tastes like at his age. 

This cake is a fun little spin on the Coconut Cream Poke Cake I shared a while back.

This cake is so moist because of the glaze that is added to it.

Yet, it manages to not taste heavy at all.  It tastes so tropical and absolutely scrumptious.

I hope you'll give it a try!

Ingredients:

1 box butter recipe cake mix

ingredients needed to make cake (softened butter, eggs, water)

1 (15 oz.) can Cream of Coconut (not coconut milk)

1 (14 oz.) can sweetened condensed milk

1 (15.25 oz.) can crushed pineapple in juice

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

sweetened coconut flakes, for topping

Directions: 

Prepare butter cake according to package directions.

While cake is baking, drain crushed pineapple into a bowl.

We need that juice for the cake.

In a separate bowl, whisk together cream of coconut, sweetened condensed milk and 

pineapple juice.

When you open the can of cream of coconut, you will probably see that some of the coconut oil and cream have separated so it's really important that you whisk this mixture so you get it combined and get most of the lumps out.

Once combined, mixture will be thin.

Note: The sweetened condensed milk is totally optional in this.

I often make my Coconut Cream Poke Cake without the sweetened condensed milk and just use the Cream of Coconut since it is pretty sweet already.  I'll leave that up to you.

Once cake is done, take it out of the oven.

    While cake is still warm, begin poking holes in the top.

I have found that this little carving fork that came with my knife set works great for poking holes quickly.  Do knife sets even come with these anymore?

If you don't have one, just use a fork or similar size utensil.

 Then pour cream of coconut mixture evenly over cake.

It will look pretty saturated. But don't worry the cake is going to soak it all up.

 After about 30 minutes it will look like this.

Once cake is completely cooled.

Top it with crushed pineapple.

Then spread Cool Whip on top.

Then sprinkle shredded coconut on top of the Cool Whip.

(You can toast your shredded coconut if you like)
This cake needs to be kept refrigerated.

Make sure you cover it with some plastic wrap or a lid.

And serve. So good!!

Enjoy!

Printable Recipe Here

Like this recipe?
Be sure to check out the Coconut Cream Poke Cake