Cinnamon Roll Poke Cake

on Dec 28, 2023

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Cinnamon Roll Poke Cake is an easy cake recipe packed with rich & sweet cinnamon roll flavor. So tasty with delicious cream cheese frosting! You can’t pass up on this rich and moist poke cake recipe.

Cinnamon Roll Poke Cake slice on white plate.

It’s hard to turn down a chewy tasty cinnamon roll. We like to pick those Pillsbury cinnamon rolls from the store every now and then whenever the cravings hit us. Even better, we’ve made all other sorts of delicious cinnamon roll recipes that capture all those sweet and buttery flavors! Whether we’re making Homemade Cinnamon Rolls or some Cinnamon Roll French Toast Casserole, we can get a tasty cinnamon dessert ready in no time. Pretty recently, we found another easy recipe that’s perfect for satisfying those sweet cinnamon roll cravings: Cinnamon Roll Poke Cake!

Poke cakes have always been a favorite kitchen hack or shortcut of ours whenever we want delicious, moist, and easy cake recipes. Between stuff like our Boston Cream Poke Cake and Strawberry Poke Cake, we’ve been able to make tasty poke cakes with all sorts of flavors! This Cinnamon Poke Cake isn’t an exception- it’s got all the delicious cinnamon roll flavor in every single bite.

Maybe the best part about poke cake recipes like this is just how easy to make they all are. You can save a bunch of time by using some store-bought cake mix! Even better, you can use some of that time to make our delicious homemade cream cheese frosting as a topping for your finished Cinnamon Cake recipe. Just an added layer of rich, sweet, tangy and buttery flavor added on top of a tasty cake recipe!

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Why you’ll love this easy Cinnamon Roll Poke Cake recipe
Cinnamon Roll Poke Cake Ingredients
How to make Cinnamon Roll Poke Cake
Substitutions
Variations
Storage / Freezing
Top tip
Other Poke Cakes to Try
More Cake Recipes
Cinnamon Roll Poke Cake Recipe

Why you’ll love this easy Cinnamon Roll Poke Cake recipe

Poke cake recipes are an easy sure-fire way to pack tons of flavor into an otherwise boring cake recipe. When it comes to make a Cinnamon Roll Cake, poke cakes are probably your best bet too! Tons of moist and rich flavor gets added in with almost no extra effort.
Our Cinnamon Roll Poke Cake would’ve been tasty enough on it’s own, but we decided to add a cream cheese frosting for even more flavor! The sweet, buttery and tangy flavor of the cake frosting tastes just like the cream cheese icing you’ll get at a place like Cinnabon.
This Cinnamon Poke Cake recipe is so easy to make and follow along with. You’re going to whip up some cake mix, poke it, hit it with a tasty cinnamon and brown sugar sauce, and top with some frosting. So dead simple while being way too tasty!

Cinnamon Roll Poke Cake Ingredients

You’re not going to need many ingredients to make a tasty Cinnamon Roll Poke Cake for yourself- you might even have a lot of them in your fridge or pantry already. Here’s all you’re going to need:

White Cake Mix – There’s plenty of different white cake mix brands out there to choose from. We went with this Betty Crocker cake mix but you could easily use something like a Pillsbury cake mix and make this a Pillsbury Cinnamon Roll Cake.
Cake Mix Ingredients – Of course, if we’re making cake from cake mix, we’ll need the ingredients off the box. This may vary from brand to brand, but we ended up needing some water, egg whites, and vegetable oil.
Butter – We’ll need this for both the mixture we’ll pour over our poke cake and for our homemade cream cheese frosting.
Vanilla Extract – Again, some for our poke cake mixture and some for our cream cheese buttercream frosting.
Light Brown Sugar
Ground Cinnamon
Sweetened Condensed Milk – Not evaporated milk. If you made that mistake, we’ll have a fix for you down in the substitutions part of this post.

For our cream cheese buttercream frosting, you’ll need the following:

Cream Cheese – Let your cream cheese soften before using it in this recipe.
Butter
Vanilla Extract
Powdered Sugar

See recipe card for quantities.

How to make Cinnamon Roll Poke Cake

Process for making poke cake with cinnamon.

Like making any other poke cake recipe, our Cinnamon Roll Poke Cake is so easy to make! To make this delicious, moist cake recipe for yourself, here’s all you need to do:

Prepare the white cake mix in a greased 9×13-inch baking dish by following the box instructions with egg white suggestion. Bake the cake and Allow the cake to cool before poking holes all over the cake with the handle of a wooden spoon.
In a measuring cup or microwave-safe bowl, combine 5 tbsp butter, 2 tsp of vanilla extract, brown sugar, cinnamon, and sweetened condensed milk. Microwave in 45 second bursts, stirring in between, until all clumps have dissolved before pouring evenly over the cake.
In a separate medium bowl, beat cream cheese until fluffy before adding remaining butter and vanilla extract. Beat until blended and then add and mix in powdered sugar 1/2 cup at a time until incorporated. Spread finished frosting over the top of the cake, smooth out, and enjoy.

Substitutions

We used a lot of shortcuts and kitchen hacks to keep the ingredients for our Cinnamon Roll Cake really simple. Still, you might have trouble finding some of these ingredients so here’s some substitutions you can give a try:

Cake Mix and Cake Mix Ingredients – If you don’t have cake mix, you could just whip up a cake real quick. Using cake mix for this recipe helps cut down on a lot of the extra measuring and prep time. Even if you have the cake mix, you might consider using some different ingredients. Instead of water, you could use all sorts of different milks; instead of egg whites, you can use whole eggs; and instead of using vegetable oil, any other neutral oil will work too.
Brown Sugar – We really like using brown sugar here because it has all those nice caramel-y flavor notes to it. It pairs really well with the cinnamon too! If you’re running low on brown sugar- or just out of it completely- you can sub in some granulated white sugar instead. It won’t taste nearly as good as the brown sugar but it’s better than nothing.
Sweetened Condensed Milk – For a quick off-the-shelf sweetened condensed milk substitute, you can go with cream of coconut. It’ll add some coconut flavor to your finished Cinnamon Poke Cake, but if it’s all you have it’ll work. Now, if you accidentally grabbed evaporated milk instead of sweetened condensed milk, we have a quick fix for you! Simply add 1 can of evaporated milk and 1-1/2 cups to a saucepan and heat until the sugar fully dissolves. Quick sweetened condensed milk!

Variations

We really liked how this Cinnamon Roll Poke Cake turned out and we wouldn’t change a thing about it! But, if you really want some ideas to shake things up for next time, here’s some you can give a shot:

Box Cake Mix Hacks – We outlined a couple of substitutions you can make to your cake mix ingredients up above but you can actually add in some other ingredients to make boxed cake mix better! Along with using milk instead of water, try adding some heavy cream to really amp up the richness. Melted butter can be used instead of neutral oil while your at it. Finally, to get your cake really rich and moist, try sneaking a packet of vanilla instant pudding mix into the cake mix as well.
Other Homemade Frosting Recipes – While we enjoyed this Cinnamon Poke Cake with a cream cheese frosting, you might want to try some other frostings. Mix some confectioners’ sugar with a bit of milk or cream to make an easy icing. Alternatively, you might want to drop the cream cheese from the frosting and make a normal buttercream frosting instead.

Cinnamon Roll Cake in a white baking pan.

Storage / Freezing

Storage: Once you’ve finished enjoying your Cinnamon Roll Cake, remember to save those leftovers. Keep the remaining cake whole and cover with plastic wrap or cut into slices and keep in airtight containers or ziploc bags. In either case, keep in the fridge for up to 4 days.

Freezing: We’re pretty sure this cake should hold up pretty well in the freezer too. You can freeze your poke cake with or without the frosting on top. Cover well with plastic wrap and/or foil and keep in the freezer for up to 3 months.