Root Beer Float Poke Cake with White Cake Mix

Imagine serving a dessert that tastes like an ice cream root beer float but in cake form. That’s what you get with this recipe for a Root Beer Float Poke Cake with White Cake Mix that you top with homemade whipped cream. And it’s so easy to make.

Root Beer Float Poke Cake with White Cake Mix

I’m so excited to share this recipe for Root Beer Float Poke Cake with White Cake Mix. It combines two of my favorite things when baking something sweet: boxed cake mix and a fizzy drink. In this instance I used root beer to make a cake that tastes like a root beer float.

In addition to using cake mix mixed with a can of root beer, you’re also making homemade whipped cream but not the way I showed in other recipes. Instead, you’re using a mix for that, too — Dream Whip, which is powdered whip topping mix that you can reconstitute quickly and easily by adding liquid to it. In this case that liquid is root beer.

Finally, you’ll notice that I call this a poke cake. That means you will be poking holes in the cake to let the delicious sweetened condensed milk seep into the baked cake. It is not poke as in a Hawaiian poke bowl. There is no accent on the “e” in poke.

Ingredients

The ingredients photo shown here has everything grouped together. But there are definitely two sets of ingredients you’ll need to divvy up from this list in order to first make the cake and then the homemade whipped topping.

Cake Ingredients

• 13 1/4 ounces white cake mix, equivalent to one box
• 1 1/4 cups root beer
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 eggs large
• 14 ounces sweetened condensed milk, one can

Whipped Topping Ingredients

• 2.3 ounces Dream Whip, two envelopes
• 1 cup root beer cold
• 12 maraschino cherries for garnish

Instructions 

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Liberally cover a 9×13 baking dish in cooking spray or parchment paper.

In a mixing bowl whisk together the cake ingredients — cake mix, 1 1/4 cup root beer, vegetable oil and eggs — EXCEPT for the sweetened condensed milk. Whisk the aforementioned ingredients, minus the sweetened condensed milk, until light and fluffy and well combined.

Pour the cake mix into the baking dish. Bake at 350 F for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool completely.

Once cool, take the end of a wooden spoon or large smoothie straw and poke holes in the cake. Using a rubber spatula, spread the condensed milk all over the top of the cake, making sure to get it into the holes you just poked so it can drip inside the baked cake.

To make the whipped topping, in a bowl and using an electric mixer, combine the Dream Whip — both envelopes — and the 1 cup of cold root beer. Whip for about 4 minutes or until fluffy and soft peaks form.

Top the cake with the root beer whipped cream. Refrigerate the cake for three hours. Top with cherries as a garnish or cut into 12 pieces and put a maraschino cherry on each piece. Serve and enjoy.

Notes

This recipe calls for using a white cake mix for your poke cake. Truth is, if you want to make it and you only have yellow cake mix in the pantry, go for it. It’s not going to affect that taste that much. Also, I know plenty of people who make this as a chocolate root beer cake so that’s an option, too.

Speaking of alternate flavors, I could easily see making this cake work with Dr. Pepper as your fizzy drink source versus root beer. I don’t think Coca-Cola would work because it would be too sweet. But Dr. Pepper, which has an almost cherry flavor, could definitely stand in for root beer if you want to go that way with this cake.

It used to be a lot easier to find Dream Whip in the stores. Now you need to buy it online and the cheapest price is at Walmart.

If you can’t find Dream Whip, you can still make a root beer-flavored whipped topping for your cake. Follow my recipe for easy homemade whipped cream. And instead of one teaspoon of sugar and a half teaspoon of vanilla extract, add one and a half teaspoons of root beer to the heavy cream. Taste as you whip and add more root beer, one teaspoon at a time, until you have the root beer infused flavor you’d like.

If you don’t have sweetened condensed milk on hand, here are some sweetened condensed milk substitutes you could consider trying.