Fruity Jell-O Poke Cake

This past weekend we celebrated my parents' 45th wedding anniversary.  Yup, 45 years of marital bliss!! I know that I'm biased but they're awesome people and give a lot to others so my sisters and I planned a whole weekend to celebrate them.  It was a jam packed long weekend filled with lots of family time which is exactly what my parents love.  As the kids get older it's harder and harder to get everyone together so my two sisters and their families, our Bookworm fam and my parents spent pretty much the entire weekend together.

We started it off Friday night with bowling and supper.  Let me preface this by saying that my family is not blessed with bowling skills but we do throw a mean gutter ball (or work the bumpers as the ball zig zags down the alley).  But we had a lot of fun trying and ended the evening with a tonne of food.

The rest of the weekend was spent at the cottage.  Yup, all 18 of us plus the 4 dogs and we had a hoot.  Lots of food, playing card games, more food (perhaps some wine flowed) and on Sunday we had our Family Games that my youngest sister organized.  Twas a hoot an a half, y'all!  Each adult was paired with a child not from their own family (I had my 6 year old nephew as my partner) and we competed in Twister (thank you yoga for making me flexible! It was the only event that my partner and I won), Bolla Ball, Frisbee Toss and Washers.  Oh my gosh, so much fun!  I think we'll add more events next year.

Anyhow, I decided to bring some dessert for the event and brought two poke cakes.  What are poke cakes you may ask?  It's a simple cake (I used a mix) that you then poke with a skewer then pour a Jell-O mixture over and pop it in the fridge for a few hours.  The Jell-O scoots down the holes making a lovely design in your cake and giving it a boost of flavour. Then you cover it with a Cool Whip mixture, sprinkles and fruit. Sooo good!  You'd think it would be heavy but it's amazingly light.  I made two kinds (strawberry and mandarin orange).  They were perfect for a gaggle of my peeps who were hungry from getting our sporty on!

Yield: a 9x13-inch cake (12-15+ servings)
Time Needed: 5+ hours

1 white cake mix
** plus ingredients needed to make cake mix (oil, water, eggs ...)**

1 cup boiling water
1 (3 oz/85g/4 serving size) package of Jell-O powder (I used orange and strawberry)
1 cup cold water

8oz Cool Whip topping, thawed (about 2/3 of the container)
1/4 cup icing sugar

Garnish
fresh fruit slices
sprinkles

Bake cake according to package instructions in a 9x13-inch baking pan.  Allow cake to cool for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, boil 1 cup of the water in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat.  Add Jell-O powder and stir until crystals have dissolved.  Pour in cold water.

Using a skewer, fork (or something similar) poke the entire cake every inch or so.  Using a small ladle, gently pour the Jell-O mixture over the cake. It may look like the top of your cake is coming apart.  Don't worry.  Just pour gently and continue. It seems like a lot of liquid but keep at it until all of the liquid is on the cake.  

Cover the cake and place in the fridge for 3 hours.

After the 3 hours remove the cake from the fridge and prepare the topping by combining the Cool Whip and the icing sugar in a medium-sized bowl. Gently spread whipped topping mixture over cake.  Return cake to the fridge for at least one hour or until ready to serve. 

Garnish with fruit slices and sprinkles or wait to garnish on individual pieces.  Keep cake in fridge until ready to serve and refrigerate any leftovers (to sneak once the kids are in bed).

Note: You can also switch things up and make different varieties depending on which Jell-O powder you use.  The overall consensus (from the 10 children) was that the strawberry version was better. You be the judge!  Mix it up!