Jello Poke Cake

I had never had one of these until I married DH. It's very simple to make this cake. But as you can see, it slips and slides all over. That top layer looks like the cake from Sleeping Beauty, you know which one I mean right? This one?

Image from google.com

Yes. It's not because I didn't level off the tops of the cake before staking. It's because cool whip is not substantial enough to use in layers, or I'm just not talented. Which, is probably what it is. I don't use cool whip. I haven't bought it in... 6-7+ years. We're real, whip your cream people around here. And admittedly when I was prepping for this cake, I went to the freezer aisle twice. Picked up a tub of cool whip, and all the alternatives. Read the ingredients, put it back. Couldn't do it. Walked around the store, and decided I had to have it, because it was DH's cake and I wanted to make it like he liked it. We've made it before without any frosting/ Cool Whip and it was great. (Though he told me later, real (stabilized) whipped cream would have been fine, ermmm, no, not "fine"- BETTER.)
I had wanted to put a layer of vanilla ice cream as a middle layer, but I was worried that freezing jello would mess everything up. I ended up putting the cake in the freezer anyway because the top layer was sliding off. I didn't have any skewers to stick in there, like this rainbow cake, to keep it in place. 

The jello was icy, out of the freezer, so we just brought the cake to room temperature and it was fine in the end. It was also yummy! So easy to make also. I used a white cake and cherry jello.
I used this Color Swirl method to color the Cool Whip, and I didn't use a pastry bag. Just a zip top bag, with a star tip.

Here's DH's cake! We had a "twisted" dinner. I cut carrots and potatoes to look twisted and made a pot roast. We had twisted Mac and Cheese, Twizzlers, Twizzler twists- the pull apart ones, the orange things you see in the picture are twisted Cheetos.

Jello Poke Cake

1 prepared cake, cooled

1 box of jello

Water to prepare the jello (I used a 1/4 cup LESS of water then called for)

Cool whip, stabilized whipped cream, or whipped cream

Food coloring, optional

A pan (9x13 inches) is best for this cake. So you don't have to worry about layering it.

With the handle of a wooden spoon, or chopstick poke holes in the cake. 

Prepare the jello as directed on the box with 1/4 cup less water than called for.

Put the jello in the fridge to cool a bit. 

Pour the jello over the cake, making sure it gets in the holes. I used a small funnel to help fill the holes.

Let the jello set in the fridge.

Frost the cake with, if you want to have the tie dye or rainbow swirls, use this method. 

* If you are layering your cake- Slice the tops off the cake to level them. After leveling them, put the cakes back into the parchment lined pan. Follow the directions to poke holes in the cake and fill with jello. Once set you can transfer the layers onto a cake plate. Have wooden skewers handy to anchor it and keep the layers from shifting. Just poke the skewers right down the cake, through all the layers. Snip off any wood that is sticking up before frosting. Don't forget to let people know that they are in there!

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