You know those ice cream bars with the amazing strawberry shortcake flavor and the pink and cream crumbly-crunch coating? Yeah… those. I remember them so fondly – just the mention of them brings me back to childhood summers spent at the community pool and carefully counting out quarters to buy one at the snack shack. But that delicious treat isn’t relegated to childhood memories anymore, because we’ve made it into a cake! And it’s a poke cake, so you can be sure that strawberry shortcake flavor runs all the way through.

If you’re not yet familiar, a poke cake is a simple 9×13 cake that you literally poke holes into so the filling has a chance to seep down into every nook and cranny. This gives you a cake that’s full of flavor without the need for stacking and layering – it’s kind of genius. They are also very well suited to boxed cake mixes, so they’re generally a cinch to make too.

This one uses a white cake mix and strawberry jello is poured all over and into the holes so you end up with vibrant streaks of strawberry pink in every slice. But it’s the frosting and crumb topping here that really set this cake apart. They both incorporate freeze-dried strawberries which have an intense, concentrated strawberry flavor and are generally easy to find near the dried fruit in your grocery store.

They’re paired with cream cheese in the frosting, which is honestly pretty irresistible and a great mimic for those shortcake ice cream bars. And the crumb topping? Well, that’s all pulverized golden oreos and freeze-dried strawberries and if you can believe it, that might be even more irresistible than the frosting it tops.