Lemon Blueberry Poke Cake

In the pan – Photo: L. Weikel

Oh, the Lemon Blueberry Poke Cake I baked the other day is certifiably evil. You’ve all seen the photos from the night I baked it. And I’ve definitely received some requests for the recipe.

What I need to tell you is this: it’s even better after sitting in the refrigerator overnight!

Unexpected Source

Before I give you the links to the variety of recipes I used to create this masterpiece of mouthwatering summer goodness, you’ll never guess where this all got started.

Last Sunday (Karl’s birthday), we had no hot water. We’ve been having a weird issue with our furnace over the past several weeks. It just mysteriously shuts off and doesn’t come back on when it should to heat our water. Luckily for us, when we hit the emergency re-set button, it’s been firing back up.

Monday morning it happened again. Even though I was confident it would re-ignite if we hit the re-set again, let’s face it: this is an untenable situation. It’s all fine now, but not when it goes off in the middle of the night during the winter. So I called the company, Haly Oil, that maintains and provides service to our furnace.

I’ve become friendly with Renee, who basically seems to run the whole show in our local office, since March or April, when the pandemic first started gearing up and our furnace started acting up. As you might imagine, she was appalled that we’re still having trouble. But one thing led to another and the next thing I knew, I was telling her about the double icing chocolate cake I’d baked for Karl the day before.

That’s when she told me that her father’s birthday was this week as well (pretty sure it was the 12^th), and she described for me the yummy cake she’d baked for him over the weekend too. When she described it, I asked her for the recipe, thinking I would do what I did and make it to commemorate Karl Daniel’s day.

Some Tweaks

The original recipe that Renee sent me is here.

Because I wanted to bake a vanilla cake from scratch (hey, I’m home; I might as well try), I looked up some recipes on the internet and found two from the same source. One is called “The Best Vanilla Cake I’ve Ever Had” and the other is called Favorite White Cake.

Both, as can be seen from the link address, are concoctions from the website Sally’s Baking Addiction.

For this first attempt, and to create what you see depicted in these photographs, I followed the “The Best Vanilla Cake I’ve Ever Had” recipe.

It. Is. Yummy.

In following the Lemon Blueberry Poke Cake recipe (by Lauren Miyashiro at delish.com), but shared by Renee, I tweaked it using organic whipped cream instead of ‘whipped topping.’ But pretty much everything else (except, of course baking the actual cake from scratch) I followed to a ‘t.’

Making Friends

All of this just goes to show the benefit of making friends wherever you find yourself. If it hadn’t been for Renee’s friendly attitude and willingness to share a most delicious recipe, I wouldn’t have been able to share this with you (and pig out over several very satisfying nights of decadent dessert-eating*).

See what you think! Next time I might give the “white cake” recipe a try. As you can see, the vanilla cake became quite dense after being refrigerated. Poor us. Ha!