I’ve got a handful of recipes I want to share with you this summer! As you may or may not know, I love cooking as a creative activity—I rarely follow any recipe exactly, and I love experimenting with variations to see what the outcome is. And my husband, David, will vouch for me—99 times out of 100, it’s delicious!
Today, I want to share this recipe for best Blueberry Muffin Poke Cake! This cake is based off a recipe I use for birthday cakes, but because it’s summer, to make it easy, we used a 9×13 pan, and poked holes for the blueberries and the icing! The result was a delicious cake the kids loved, and it tasted just like blueberry muffins!
We started with a basic yellow cake mix. I go gluten-free as often as possible in our house, as we have celiac relatives and I just don’t think it agrees with our systems.
Next, it’s time to doctor it up. I’ve been adding stuff to my box cake mixes from the beginning of time, and the variation is always something like this: 1 cup each of flour (I used gluten free for this as well), sugar, water, and melted butter, and 1 teaspoon of flavoring (I used vanilla here, but almond is DELISH if you’re making a birthday cake!), three eggs and a dash of salt.
We’ve been practicing cracking eggs over here. It’s taken multiple recipes to explain to the kids that you don’t push IN on the eggs, but rather gently pull apart. I think we’ve finally got it, as you can see from the care someone is putting into egg cracking in these pictures!
Next, time to stir! All hands on deck, obviously. Plus, what’s a cake baking session with three kids without an argument over who gets to stir first and for how long?
We almost forgot! One cup of butter!
Stir, stir, stir. Stir, stir, stir. Obviously, you could use a hand mixer or stand mixer for this as well, but hand-stirring takes longer, and frankly, sometimes summer is just looking for some time to kill, you know what I’m saying?
Next, grease a pan. You could use a stick of butter and just rub it all over the place, but we had a butter flavored cooking spray on hand and SOMEONE completely doused the pan for us.
More stirring, just to make sure everyone got a turn.
Now, for the important part: tasting! No one in this house is scared of a little raw egg!
Time to pour!
Don’t forget to scrape the sides! When I’m doing things like this, I try to remember to explain it to the kids: “Hey kids, this is called ‘scraping the sides’!” I usually feel like I’m over explaining things, but then a child responds with an “Ok, cool,” or something like that. And then I feel like I’m getting extra points as a parent because I taught my kids something new! Parent point!
Into the oven goes the cake! And then…
Out it comes!
We (impatiently) let it cool on the stove for about an hour.
Finally! The MOST fun part–poking! No taking turns here, everyone must poke at the same time! On your mark, get set, GO!
Poking craziness ensued. It’s hard to over-poke a poke cake. Frankly, I think ours could have used a few more pokes.
Now, time for the blueberry glaze. This glaze consisted of frozen blueberries, apple juice, whipping cream and vanilla.
Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle!
Next, it’s time for the icing. You can make your own here, but frankly, we cheated on this round and bought a can of the store-bought stuff. You can add flavorings to these, but we just heated it up for a few seconds, poured it into an easy-to-pour pitcher, and started drizzling! You’re basically done at this point, except…
SOMEONE wanted to “mix the colors together”. And what fun is summer cooking unless someone lets you experiment and make a mess and who cares if it looks perfect? Sugar is sugar, my friends.
Time to practice our knife skills. I’m a super-paranoid mom (one of my life mottos is I’d rather be paranoid than dead), so I probably over-supervise at this juncture, but hey. You do you!
Garnishing with blueberries!
Happy campers! They loved it!
And now here is the recipe for the best Blueberry Muffin Poke Cake!
Ingredients for the cake:
- Yellow cake mix (we opted for a gluten-free option)
- 1 cup of flour (again, we typically use gluten-free in our house)
- 1 cup of sugar
- 1 cup of water
- 1 cup melted butter (plus more to grease the pan)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla or almond flavoring
- 3 eggs
- Dash of salt
Ingredients for the glaze & icing:
- 1 cup of frozen blueberries (plus extra for garnishing!)
- 1/2 cup of apple juice
- 1/2 cup of whipping cream
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla
- 1 container of vanilla icing (could also make your own, but we went store-bought here!)
Directions:
- Preheat your oven to the temperature on the cake mix box.
- Grease a 9×13 cake pan (we used a butter spray here but any spray or butter will do!).
- Add dry ingredients to a mixing bowl and mix.
- Add eggs to the bowl and mix.
- Pour the mix into the cake pan.
- Bake for the time listed on the cake mix box or until the cake is set in the middle.
- Let the cake cool for at least one hour.
- While the cake is cooling, make the glaze by blending all of the ingredients in a blender.
- Once the cake is cooled, use the ends of spatulas (or any kitchen tool) to poke holes in the cake.
- Pour the glaze all over the cake, making sure it seeps into the holes of the cake.
- Heat your container of icing in the microwave for 10-15 seconds.
- Pour the icing over the cake and enjoy the best blueberry muffin poke cake!
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