This triple chocolate poke cake is sure to please your favorite chocoholic! Light, fluffy cake is filled with dollops of chocolate pudding, layered with chocolate-cream cheese frosting, and topped off with a chocolate whipped cream!
You all know about my love affair with chocolate. And cake. It’s no secret.
In fact, my vegan chocolate cake is one of the more popular recipes on the site.
So when I started seeing all the poke cake recipes floating around these days, I just had to try my hand at one. After much experimentation – and a really messy kitchen – I landed on this triple chocolate poke cake.
Wait – did I say TRIPLE Chocolate Cake? Yep! I did.
Actually, I could probably even call it a quadruple chocolate poke cake.
What is a poke cake?
If you’ve never made a poke cake before, this is going to be so much fun! A poke cake is literally what it sounds like – a cake that you poke holes in.
Of course, we don’t go around poking holes in perfectly good cakes for no reason. We fill the holes up with all sorts of delicious things.
In the case of this triple chocolate poke cake, we poke holes in our cake batter, and fill them up with creamy chocolate pudding. Yum!
Let’s Make Triple Chocolate Poke Cake!
Making these cakes is just so much fun!
We start off by making a very simple white cake, and baking it to perfection.
Now, if you want to cheat a little, you could also just buy a boxed white cake mix and use it for this part. I won’t tell anyone.
And if you want to make a gluten-free version of this cake, check out this gluten-free white cake recipe. Just substitute that for the white cake layer!
When your basic white cake is finished, that’s where it starts to get fun!
Take the handle of a spoon, or something similarly sized, and poke holes all over your cake. Don’t worry about getting them exactly evenly spaced – it really doesn’t matter.
Next, pour chocolate pudding all over the cake, making sure to push some into all the wholes.
I discovered a little trick for making these poke cakes last week. You can use one of these squirt bottles, like the kind they use for condiments in restaurants, to easily squeeze the filling into the holes.
If you think you’ll make poke cakes regularly, it’s definitely worth having some of these around. They’re also handy for neatly drizzling sour cream and dressings.
For the next layer of our triple chocolate cake, we mix up a quick chocolate-cream cheese frosting from cream cheese, powdered sugar, chocolate, and a little milk. Spread this on top of your cake.
And for our final layer, we’ll make a fluffy chocolate whipped topping. Just mix together whipped cream, chocolate syrup, and chocolate chips.
I was short on time, so I picked up some frozen whipped topping for this cake. But I usually like to make my own whipped cream – because it’s so simple to do. If you want to give it a try – just take some heavy cream, sugar, and a dash of vanilla extract and whip until it forms a soft peak.
Top the poke cake with a sprinkle of chocolate chips. And if you want to be extra fancy, you can pick up some white chocolate sauce to drizzle over the top!
Need more chocolate?
If that wasn’t enough chocolate to satisfy you, check out some of my other favorite chocolate desserts!
- Vegan Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Chocolate Macaroons with Dark Chocolate Ganache
- Banoffee Chocolate Puddings
- Black Chocolate Dahlia Cake
Triple Chocolate Poke Cake
Ingredients
- FOR WHITE CAKE LAYER:
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 12 tbsp unsalted butter softened
- 4 egg whites
- 1 cup milk
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- cooking spray
- CHOCOLATE PUDDING LAYER:
- 4 oz chocolate pudding
- CHOCOLATE-CREAM CHEESE FROSTING LAYER:
- 16 oz cream cheese softened
- 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
- 2 tbsp cocoa powder unsweetened
- 2 tbsp milk
- FOR CHOCOLATE WHIPPED CREAM
- 8 oz whipped topping frozen
- 3 tbsp chocolate syrup
- 3/4 cup chocolate chips
- FOR TOPPING
- extra chocolate chips optional
- white chocolate sauce optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- In a small bowl, mix together the wet ingredients (butter, egg whites, milk, vanilla extract) for the white cake layer.
- In a separate larger bowl, mix together the dry ingredients for the white cake layer (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt).
- Mix together the dry and wet ingredients to form the cake batter. Use an electric mixer to make this easier, if you have one.
- Spray a 9" x 13" baking pan with cooking spray.
- Pour cake batter into baking pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until a sharp knife inserted into the cake comes out clean.
- Allow cake to cool until it can be safely handled.
- Using the back of a spoon, or other utensil, poke cake all over to form holes.
- Spread the chocolate pudding on top of the cake, being sure to get the pudding down into the holes you just made.
- Next, mix together the cream cheese and powdered sugar. Mix in the unsweetened chocolate and 2 tablespoons of milk. Beat by hand or with a mixer, until frosting consistency is formed. Spread evenly over the cake.
- Mix the whipped topping with the chocolate syrup and chocolate chips. Spread this over the top of the cake.
- Sprinkle extra chocolate chips over the chocolate poke cake for garnish. And top with a drizzle of white chocolate sauce if desired.
