This Strawberry Poke Cake is completely made from scratch. It’s perfect for summer gatherings.
A classic summer dessert with bursting summer strawberries and sweet cream.
This is my first time making strawberry poke cake. If you have no idea what it is or why that name, I am going to walk you through some information and recipe form homemade version.
Poke Cake essentially is a retro-style dessert made with boxed cake mix, fruit gelatin or Jello and a whipped cream topping or cool whip.
Just like me, if you didn’t grow up in America, probably you haven’t tried it either. It’s a very easy recipe if you decide to make it from store-bought components. I will share that later, but for now let me talk you through my homemade from scratch version.
My recipe includes a delicious vanilla, lemon-based sheet cake, a jammy thick strawberry sauce, and the whole cake is covered in sweet vanilla whipped cream.
It is absolutely a must for strawberry season, summer gatherings and upcoming 4th of July weekend.
If you have been going strawberry picking, this is the recipe you need to try! The strawberry season is my favorite season as the berries are the plumpest, juiciest, reddest strawberries ever. You have no idea how many ways I want to enjoy strawberries.
What is Poke Cake?
Poke Cake gets its name from the poking done all over the cake with a round wooden dowel, to create pokes while the cake is still warm. The fruity sauce is poured all over the cake and holes/poke, and cake soaks up all the flavor as it cools down. When it is sliced you get these little pockets of jammy sauce in each bite.
By all means, Box cake mix is fine. But this version from scratch is equally good to impress someone. In my opinion, it just takes 10 minutes extra but so worth it. But if I am in rush or need something quick, stress free by all means use box mix.
Tips/ Suggestions
Use fresh strawberries or frozen, either would work fine for the sauce. For garnish, you will need some fresh strawberries.
You can also use few different berries and make a combination of it.
Use ingredients at room temperature, like eggs, buttermilk, butter. They create better texture of the cake.
It is important to poke holes while the cake is still slightly warm and add your filling. It soaks up better.
You can use cream cheese or mascarpone cheese along with heavy whipping cream. It will make more stabilized cream for warm or hot weather.
While baking cakes, always add dry flour mix and wet liquid alternately, as it mixes well, and you do not end up over mixing the batter.
To make buttermilk at home, I just took 1/3 cup of plain yogurt and mixed in water to get desired amount of liquid. Or 1 tbsp of lemon to ½ cup whole milk and let it sit until it curdles.
Feel free to use a boxed cake mix and bake it as per instructions, instead of homemade whipped cream use cool whip.
You can also use a pack of cream cheese or mascarpone cheese and half of the heavy cream to make the topping.
You can make berry filling and whipped cream a day in advance. Just warm up the berry filling slightly in microwave before adding to the cake. Cake should be warm when you add the berry filling.
Feel free to add cardamom to the whipped cream for extra nice flavor.
This cake is better served when made in advance just for few hours or overnight.
Look how pretty the cake looks and it taste perfect for summer and your friends are absolutely going to love it.
Strawberry Poke Cake
Ingredients
Cake
- 1 1/3 cup All Purpose
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp salt
- 2 sticks butter room temperature
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 eggs room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp lemon zest and 1 tbsp juice
- 1/2 cup buttermilk
Strawberry Sauce
- 2 cups strawberries extra for garnish/serving
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1 tbsp cornstarch
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 -3 tbsp water
Heavy cream
- 1 ½ cup heavy cream
- 1/3 cup powdered sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven to 350 F. Grease a square baking pan, or round 8’inch baking pan with non-stick spray or butter.
- Whisk together the dry ingredients, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl and whisk it and set it aside.
- Using a handheld mixer or kitchen aid, beat butter and sugar on high speed until light and creamy, about 2-3 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, followed by lemon zest and lemon juice, vanilla. Beat for another 1 minutes and it is mixed in and it looks fluffy. Scrape the bowl in between while mixing.
- Add half of the flour mixture, followed by buttermilk and mix on low speed and add rest of flour and buttermilk mixture. Mix until just combined. Do not overmix.
- Pour cake batter into the prepared pan and bake until its golden in color and center is baked when you test it with a toothpick for 30 minutes.
Strawberry Sauce
- While the cake is baking, make the strawberry filling. Add chopped strawberries and sugar to small saucepan along with water and cornstarch. Bring to boil, and then reduce heat and simmer until its thickened for about 507 minutes more.
- Remove from heat.
- Once the cake is baked, use a wooden dowel or end of wooden spoon to create holes/poke about 1 inch apart, all over the cake all the way to the bottom of the pan. Spoon strawberry filling all over the cake, make sure you are pouring the sauce in the holes as much as possible.
- Cover it and let it cool down completely at least for an hour.
Whipped Cream
- With the help of a handheld mixer or kitchen aid mixer, with whisk attachment, beat whipping cream along with powdered sugar and vanilla to form medium peaks. Once the cake has cooled down, spread it all over the top of the strawberry sauce. You can garnish it with extra strawberries as you wish.
- I piped some frosting in little rounds, and placed strawberries on top.
- Serve immediately or later. Can be made a day in advance and leftovers should be stored in the fridge.
