Earthquake Cake is generally an oeey-gooey chocolate experience where a cream cheese filling rises up through the cracks in the surface of the cake. (So there’s need for frosting!) Well, this variation of Earthquake Cake is just as ooey-gooey, just as easy to make, and still has that delicious eruption of cream cheese filling going on, it just happens that the cake is flavored with pineapple, coconut, and macadamia nuts instead of the chocolate. It’s like a tropical vacation in a cake pan, but you don’t have to get on a plane to enjoy it!

Good news – you get to use boxed cake mix for this cake. It keeps things super easy, but since you’re doctoring it up with some special add-ins, you won’t miss the homemade quality of a totally from-scratch cake. You whisk up some yellow cake mix with the ingredients called for on the box, but also with some coconut cream pudding mix (it keeps things extra moist) and then you pour it over some coconut and macadamia nuts.

And then it’s time for the filling! It’s a quick mixture of cream cheese, butter, pineapple, and powdered sugar, and you swirl it lightly into the top of the cake and top it with white chocolate chips.

As it bakes, the cake rises up around that filling so that in every morsel you get a tender bite of coconut-scented cake but also a velvety pineapple-cream cheese one too. In other words, you don’t need any frosting at all, because it’s more or less incorporated into the actual cake.

I don’t know that there’s anything more heavenly than the combination of pineapple, coconut, and macadamia nuts and this cake sure does that combo justice. It’s just a happy kind of combo, you know? And this cake brings it together in a way that’s light but creamy, just sweet enough, and sure to brighten any day.