Cherry Cake {A Scratch Recipe}
Oh how we LOVE this amazing Cherry Cake recipe from scratch! We are so happy to have another tried & true homemade recipe for our collection of favorite cakes.
I love light, fruit flavored cakes any time of the year, but especially in the spring and summer. This versatile and flavorful recipe deserves a place in your recipe box!
It seems that Cherry Cake is an often overlooked cake superstar when it comes to cakes with fruit.
Often Strawberry Cakes or Lemon Cakes are the first to spring to our minds when planning our dessert menus for summertime gatherings.
While we've included SO many favorite fruity cakes in our Recipes Section, don't overlook this amazing homemade Cherry Cake! It just might become a new favorite.
Table of Contents
Why We Love It
- The cherry cake layers have a moist, tender crumb.
- Light cherry flavor (from cherries, maraschino cherry juice, and a splash of cherry extract)
- Beautiful slices with bits of maraschino cherries
- Perfect for spring and summer birthdays
How to make a Cherry Cake
You can find the full, printable cherry cake recipe below, with complete instructions and ingredients. Here is a quick look at our steps!
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, grease and flour three 8 inch round pans.
- In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt for at least 30 seconds
- In another bowl, add the egg whites, cherry juice, milk, vanilla and cherry extract, and vegetable oil. Blend together with a fork
- In the bowl of your mixer add the softened butter and mix at medium speed to soften. Next, add the sugar and continue to mix for a few minutes until lightened in color and fluffy.
- With the mixer on low speed, we will now alternate between adding dry and wet ingredients. Add approximately one third of the flour mixture to the bowl, mixing on low speed until just blended. Add about half of the wet ingredients and blend, and so on. Continue alternating the dry and wet ingredients (ending with dry). We do three additions of dry, two of wet. Mix just until blended.
- Reserve approximately 2 Tablespoons chopped cherries. Gently stir the remaining chopped cherries into the batter.
- Once the batter is divided between the three prepared cake pans, sprinkle the reserved cherries over the top of the batter, using a toothpick push them just slightly below the surface of the cake batter.
- Bake at 350 degrees F for 30-35 minutes, when the cake springs back to the touch or a toothpick pulls out clean or with only a few crumbs attached, the cake is done.
- Cool the cake layers in the pans, one a wire rack, for ten minutes before turning out.
- This cherry cake recipes makes 7 ½ cups cake batter.
Versatility of this Cherry Cake Recipe
This moist scratch Cherry Cake recipe is tender, flavorful, and is the prettiest shade of pink. While soft, the cake layers are sturdy enough to be covered in a layer of fondant. The cherry cake batter makes for beautiful homemade cupcakes also.
Frost or drizzle this delightful Cherry Cake with decadent chocolate ganache for a "Chocolate Covered Cherry" cake, coat it with luxurious Cherry Cream Cheese Frosting, or add a bit of cherry extract to your favorite vanilla buttercream!
More Cherry Cakes
If you love cherry cakes, don't miss these other delicious recipes! We have tons of fruity cake recipes to share with you. You'll find cakes from scratch as well as cake mix recipes on our site. Here are a few cherry cake favorites:
- Cherry Chocolate Chip Cake (pictured below)
- Chocolate Covered Cherry Cake
- Cherry Layer Cake- Doctored Cake Mix Recipe
- Black Forest Cake
- Cherry Cream Cheese Frosting
Summer Cakes
If you're looking for more fruity Summertime Cake Recipes, don't miss our Roundup of favorites! Summertime Cake Roundup
Thanks for stopping by! If you try our Cherry Cake recipe, make sure to let us know what you think in the comments below! We think you're going to love this one!
Enjoy the Recipe
Have you made this? We would LOVE for you to leave a ⭐️ rating as well as a comment and photo below! We really appreciate your feedback!
Cherry Cake from Scratch
This moist and flavorful Cherry Cake from Scratch is one of our favorites! Keep it in mind for spring and summer gatherings!
Ingredients
- 3 cups (342g) cake flour plus 2 Tablespoons for dusting cherries
- 1Tablespoon (15g) baking powder
- ½ teaspoon (2g) salt
- 6 egg whites (180g)
- ⅔ cup (146g) cherry juice from a 10 ounce bottle of maraschino cherries, if there is not enough juice to reach ⅔'s cup add water or milk
- ¾ cup (172g) milk
- 1 teaspoon (4g) vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon (4g) cherry extract
- ¼ cup (54g) vegetable oil
- 2 cups (400g) granulated sugar
- 1 cup (2 sticks) (226g) unsalted butter, slightly softened but still cold to the touch
- maraschino cherries from a 10 ounce jar (use all) chopped and dusted with 2 Tablespoons flour
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour 3 (8 inch) round pans
- In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt for at least 30 seconds
- In another bowl, add the egg whites, cherry juice, milk, vanilla and cherry extract, and vegetable oil. Blend together with a fork.
- In the bowl of your mixer add the butter and beat at medium speed to soften. Add the sugar and continue to beat until lightened in color and fluffy, approximately 3 minutes, longer if using a hand mixer.
- With the mixer on low speed, we will now alternate between adding dry and wet ingredients. Add approximately one third of the flour mixture to the bowl, mixing on low speed until just blended. Add about half of the wet ingredients and blend, and so on. Continue alternating the dry and wet ingredients (ending with dry). We do three additions of dry, two of wet. Mix just until blended.
- Reserve approximately 2 Tablespoons chopped cherries. Gently stir the remaining chopped cherries into the batter. Divide the batter between the three prepared 8 inch cake pans.
- Once the batter is in the cake pans, sprinkle the reserved cherries over the top of the batter, and using a toothpick push them just slightly below the surface of the cake batter. Even though the flour is supposed to keep the cherries from sinking to the bottom of the pan, I find that most will, so this is my reason for adding a few to the top.
- Bake for 30 - 35 minutes, when the cake springs back to the touch or a toothpick pulls out clean or with only a few crumbs attached, the cake is done. Allow to cool in the pans on a wire rack for ten minutes before turning out.
- Makes 7 ½ cups cake batter
- Works well for cupcakes and Will hold up to fondant
Notes
The cherry cake layers can be made in advance and frozen. To freeeze the cake layers, we like to place each layer individually on its own foil wrapped cardboard cake circle. Wrap with plastic wrap followed by aluminum foil. Freeze for up to three months.
Thaw on the kitchen counter, still wrapped for 30-45 minutes before unwrapping and thawing to desired amount. Some bakers prefer to assemble their cakes while the layers are still partially frozen as they are less fragile.
Looking forward to trying this for a client who misses his mom's cherry cake (which he's pretty sure was made from a mix but anyway). However, I cannot find cherry extract anywhere and will not have enough time to make my own.
What are good substitutes for cherry extract that will still punch up the cherry flavor and the pink color? I know almond would complement the cherry, but it's not a favorite.
Thanks!
Hi Jody, without getting into experimenting with changing the actual recipe (substituting pureed cherries for some of the liquid for instance) which can be hit or miss as to how it will bake up/effect flavor & texture, the easiest bet is to boost the cherry flavor in between the cake layers.
As you assemble the cake, you could brush the cake layers with maraschino cherry juice (from the jar) or pureed maraschino cherries, add your filling/frosting, and then sprinkle finely chopped maraschino cherries on top of the filling before adding the next cake layer.
*Just as a side note, we've tried adding a couple of tablespoons of cherry jello powder to our cherry pound cake batter (as we did in our strawberry doctored cake mix recipe) to see if it would make a good substitute for the extract, and we found that the flavor didn't really come through.
Adding it to the filling should do the trick. Good luck!
for anyone having trouble locating cherry extract I found some at my local Michael's store.
Sorry, haven’t made it but would “almond extract” impart a “cherry flavour” and what would the best icing/filling would I use before serving/eating
Hi Valerie- Almond extract will only add almond flavor. We actually have a really good Cherry Almond Cake though if you are interested in that flavor combination!
For our cherry cake recipes like this one, we like our Cherry Cream Cheese Frosting. However, you could also make a Cherry Buttercream by doctoring our Classic Vanilla Buttercream recipe with cherry extract or a bit of maraschino cherry juice instead of milk (reserved from the jar of cherries).
Cherry Almond Cake: https://www.mycakeschool.com/cherry-almond-cake/
Cherry Cream Cheese Frosting: https://www.mycakeschool.com/cherry-cream-cheese-frosting/
This was a horrible cake. Had to almost double the bake time and it was still uncooked in the middle. Followed directions exactly as shown.
Hi Cheryl- This has been a really popular recipe over the years- I'm sorry that it didn't work out for you! The extra baking time is very unusual unless you divided the batter between two pans rather than three...or used a bundt pan, or smaller pans, etc. If not, I would use an oven thermometer to double check that your oven is heating properly.
As a child, I loved store-mix cherry cake. That memory inspired me to seek this recipe out. I made this recipe in a half-batch as cupcakes for Valentines day. Substituted 1/2 maraschino juice with some reduced sour cherry juice i had left over from a pie filling and skipped the extract. Very good results. Thank you.
Hi Randy, I am happy the cupcakes turned out well for you. Thank you for posting!
This cake is absolutely FABULOUS👩🏾🍳😘. That's all I've got, lol.
hi,
What do you mean by cherry extract? I'm finding that cherry extract actually means nutritional supplements that are derived from either tart cherry, black cherry, etc. I also find fake cherry "flavoring". Which are you meaning? What exactly does this recipe call for?
Hi Steph, we like Watkins Cherry Extract. There are other options out there too - Lorann has a bakery emulsion, etc.
Has anyone tried this recipe with luxardo cherries? I know it will change the flavor and expense.
Hope somebody answers you because I'm wondering about that too!
Would this recipe support cupcakes? if so what would be the baking time/temp?
Hi Brandie, I'm not sure that we've made cupcakes with this but it should be fine! They'll likely bake up with little to no dome. We usually bake cupcakes at 350 for 15-18 minutes. At 7.5 cups of cake batter, you should have enough for around 30 cupcakes. Hope you enjoy them!
I was wondering what frosting works best with this cake?
The cake was very nice , ooooooh my favourite one
Hello,
Thank you for this recipe. My mother in law always makes a cherry cake for my son’s birthday, and this year it’s my turn. The cake turned out excellent.
One small issue involved the weight for the cake flour. I measured three cups (strict), but the weight was 445 grams. I checked calibration on my scale, and I checked the cake flour box. Both indicated the recipe was correct.
It still ended up wonderfully moist. I am putting this out there for anyone else who runs into a similar issue. Don’t worry, it will turn out fine.
I am going to turn these in to cupcakes next.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Rich