Luscious Lemon Cake

I'm hardly a foodie and don't do too many recipes here, but I've been on a roll lately so you might just see more food here for a little while.  This weekend I tried something a little different, something I made up by combining a bunch of ideas from Pinterest and all those recipes that are populating Facebook these days.  This is a lemon poke cake with raspberry cream filling and lemon cream cheese frosting.  Interested in this yummy summer cake?  Read on.

You need:
1 box lemon cake mix                             eggs, water and oil (to make box cake)
1 package Jello lemon pudding mix        milk (to make pudding)
1/2 container Cool Whip                         raspberry preserves (jelly is fine too)
1 container lemon frosting                      1 container whipped cream cheese frosting

Make the cake according to directions in two round (8 or 9") pans.  When cake comes out of oven, poke each round multiple times with straw (or other hole-making implement) and pour prepared lemon pudding over the holes.  Smooth and remove excess pudding.  Refrigerate (because I like cold cake when I apply frosting).

Mix Cool Whip and raspberry preserves to taste.  I used about half a regular size container of Cool Whip and about 1/2 a cup of preserves.  I honestly can't give exact measurements because I mixed until I had the taste and consistency I wanted.  You want the raspberry taste, but not too strong.  Smooth liberally over one of the rounds.

Mix the lemon and whipped cream cheese frostings.  Note that I used "whipped" cream cheese frosting which you can find in the prepared tubs.  Unfortunately for me, I had to make add real whipped cream cheese (not frosting) because I didn't have enough frosting after my growing son ate most of it!  Mix the frostings, again to taste.  I would use more cream cheese frosting than lemon because the consistency is better with whipped cream cheese frosting and it cuts the strong lemon taste a bit.

Put the other round on top and frost the cake.  Voila!

I wanted to show a cross section so you can see the filling.  Note the frosting is clumpy because I had to mix in real cream cheese to make enough frosting.  It still tastes great, just isn't quite as pretty.  You can also heat the frosting and drizzle it over the top.

I'm pretty proud of this one so I think it's a keeper.  If you like a flavorful lemon cake, give it a try.

Cindy