Lately I’ve been having a pretty big sweet tooth. I normally like salty over sweet, but over the past 2 weeks, my sweet tooth has really kicked in. Of course…Pinterest doesn’t help this.

I have a whole Pinterest board dedicated to food, and I’m always trying to find really tasty low calorie meals or desserts. I always try and trick my mind into thinking what I’m eating is “bad” when really, it’s pretty healthy. For instance- pasta. Get the high fiber, whole wheat. It still tastes good, but my body thinks it’s “bad” for me since it used to be an indulgence.

I found this Banana Pudding Poke Cake recipe via The Country Cook and was immediately drawn in. I mean, with a picture like this, how could you resist?!

I decided to make itty bitty changes to her recipe to make it my own, and make it low calorie (because doesn’t that always make you feel better?!). 

So here’s my version of banana poke cake! 

Ingredients:
Pillsbury Moist Supreme Classic Yellow Cake Mix (Sugar Free)
Diet Soda (You’ll want a clear soda like Sprite, Ginger Ale, 7 up, etc)
Reduced Fat Vanilla Wafers
Sugar Free Cool Whip
2 boxes Instant Banana Pudding
4 cups of skim milk (or whatever you have)
Pam Cooking Spray
3 bananas
Another trick I found on Pinterest was making a box cake with using the mix and a soda only to make it. I figured this would be an easy way to leave out eggs and oil but I wasn’t sure how moist it would be. I figured if I got the “Moist Supreme” cake mix then I wouldn’t have to worry about it. 
1. In a large bowl, pour your cake mix and get out any clumps of mix. Then slowly pour the soda into your mix while stirring. Keep stirring until you get out the lumps (your cake mix will end up looking like it normally would, had you added eggs and oil). Once fully mixed, spray your baking pan with Pam, then pour your batter into a 9×13 pan. I used a glass pan and it took me about 35 minutes of baking for my toothpick to come out clean. Make sure you don’t over bake! 
2. Take out your cake and let it cool for about 5 minutes. It should look pretty and golden like this: 
3. This is the not so pretty part. Use the handle of a wooden spoon (or something of similar circumference) and poke lots of holes all over your cake. Some of my cake came onto my spoon (because you should be doing this while the cake is warm), but as long as you take it off the spoon and put it back it’ll be fine. You really can’t mess this part up. Really- it doesn’t have to look pretty. 
4. Mix your 2 packages of banana pudding with the cold milk, and whisk until combined and not fully set. Then pour it over your ugly, poked cake and smooth it out. Once smoothed, slice bananas and place all over the cake. I filled in gaps with the little tiny ends of the bananas, but you’re welcome to snack on those 😉 
5. Take out your tub of cool whip and dumb the whole tub on top of the bananas and spread it out with a spatula. 
6. Take your vanilla wafers (don’t use the broken ones) and place them all over your cake in rows (or if you feel inclined to crush them all and just put a crumb topping, that’s cool too!). 
Using MyFitnessPal, I was able to calculate how many calories each slice would be (if you had a 2 vanilla wafer section) and it came out to 106 calories! This recipe is REALLY rich because the cake is so moist, and honestly, my husband and his friend and I couldn’t eat much more than that (although later we did go back for more). 
Let me know if you try it out! 

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