Jared's Pokemon Dive Ball Cake

Jared's birthday is Friday, but one of his friends is only around on Weds, so we decided to celebrate early with a Pokemon Battle Party. This is really Jared's first official party, though it was not pitched as a birthday party at all. Some of his friends brought gifts, but most did not. In our head, the party would consist of a tournament style event. Eight boys were invited and everyone drew a card. Matching cards were meant to battle each other. Unfortunately half the group had no idea how to battle and a good hour or so was spent teaching them so only a couple of boys managed to do more than one battle. As a party favor, everyone received a Pokemon card from a booster pack. At the end we went swimming for about a half hour. I hope everyone had fun.

Like Aaron, Jared chose a Pokemon themed cake. He chose a Pokemon Dive Ball, making it another year of a water theme. I decided a poke cake would be a fun way to prepare it because I could use blue jello and have a water effect all the way through. So although he didn't have the jello pool like in year's past, he did have jello in the cake. I debated a white cake or a lemon cake and ended up with a blend. I added lemon juice to the cake batter and frosting but it really wasn't flavored much. I used the Jolly Rancher Blue Raspberry jello, strawberry cream cheese frosting to layer and stack the cakes, and a cream cheese/whipped topping lemon frosting dyed blue for the design. I think it turned out pretty well.

Jared wanted characters on top and I had originally planned on creating some water characters for it, but it was delusions of grandeur. I ended up making the cake within hours before the party which is a bad thing for a poke cake. It is best to let it soak overnight. I ended up putting it in the freezer to chill and most of the boys didn't eat their slice. Oh well. But I digress.... While I worked on the cake, Jared and Aaron made Pokemon characters from marshmallows: Cleffa, Igglybuff, and Execute. There were just enough that I could put them around the cake.

Recipes Used:

Nathan's Lemon Cake base (subbed whole milk w/ vinegar and 4 TB lemon juice. I dyed 1/4 c sugar blue thinking I'd use it as sprinkles on the top of the cake, but added it to the batter instead. The cake turned a greenish hue as it mixed with the yellow butter, but it looked fine once it was done and the blue jello was absorbed. I also only had one egg, so two of them were THRIVE eggs. Instead of water I added lemon juice.)

Raspberry poke cake (referenced for making and adding the jello)

Lemon Poke Cake (Recipe is basically the same as Nathan's cake but uses sour cream instead of buttermilk. She adds sweetened condensed milk instead of jello. I based my frosting off her cream cheese frosting and the traditional cool whip frosting for poke cakes.)

Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting (Used the leftover frosting from Aaron's cake to layer and dirty frost Jared's cake)

My frosting:

8 oz tub of cool whip
8 oz softened cream cheese
powdered sugar to consistency (at least one cup)
about 1 tsp lemon extract (I didn't measure, just poured)