Picture it: The year is 1979, and little Scott is turning 9. All the kids on the block are there. The card table has been hauled in from the garage, the folding chairs have been set up, and the twisted crepe paper streamers are scotch-taped in the front window. The pile of gifts all wrapped in the Sunday funny papers are waiting to be ripped into after a few rounds of Simon Says and musical chairs are played. Several pitchers of Kool-Aid have been mixed up, potato chips have been dumped in bowls, and a huge five-gallon tub of vanilla ice cream-which probably cost $1.50-is slowly melting into foam next to the sheet cake. Why do I remember this birthday? The cake was a lemon/lime Jell-O Poke Cake! Bright puckery lemon cake with day-glo green Jell-O veins. The idea was simple: lemon box cake baked up, cooled, poked with a fork, and lime Jell-O poured into the poke holes topped with Cool Whip. The Jell-O gave the cake a nice moist texture (pardon the word moist). I know a lot of people have very strong feelings about the word...moist. I try not to say moist very much because it is borderline offensive. Moist... and a fun flash of green color. Instant haute-cuisine de 1970s. Poke Cakes were THE hot cake. Mother had clipped out the 7 cent off coupon from Better Homes and Gardens and got hip to the cake happenings and saved my 9-year-old's social game.
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