Strawberry Cake {A Scratch Recipe}
We have fallen in love with this flavorful scratch Strawberry Cake.
This strawberry layer cake has become one of our favorite recipes, with its moist and soft cake layers and big strawberry flavor.
There are so many frostings that would pair perfectly with this cake, but cream cheese frosting may be my favorite.
Table of Contents
Why we Love it
- Moist, tender cake layers
- We love cakes with fruit for their light and refreshing flavor (as with our pineapple cake, lemon cake recipe, raspberry cake, and so many more!)
- Wonderful strawberry flavor from strawberry puree and strawberry extract, as with our strawberry coconut cake and more.
- Plenty of batter for three 8 inch cake layers
- Works great with frozen strawberries, making it a perfect year-round cake!
- Makes a great birthday cake recipe, special occasion cake, and more.
Frostings for Strawberry Cake
This moist strawberry cake is bursting with wonderful strawberry flavor, and tastes amazing with these frostings and fillings (and many more)!
- Strawberry Filling
- Chocolate Buttercream (if making a chocolate covered strawberry cake!)
Fresh vs. Frozen Strawberries
You don't have to wait for strawberry season to enjoy this delicious strawberry cake. It calls for strawberry puree made from fresh or frozen strawberries.
We think you'll love the fresh strawberry flavor that more than a cup of strawberry puree lends to the cake.
Reverse Creaming Method of Mixing
This cake calls for the Reverse Creaming Method of mixing, for a moist and tender cake. The ingredients are added in a different order than the traditional creaming method, resulting in a slightly tighter crumb and velvety texture.
*If you would prefer to use the traditional creaming method for this fresh strawberry cake recipe, you can find it in the Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cake recipe!
How to Make Strawberry Cake
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. (This recipe uses the reverse creaming method as is explained above.)
Grease and flour three 8 x 2 inch round cake pans - I like three layers because it gives us an extra layer of filling. *We also like to line our prepared pans with parchment circles.
- In a separate bowl, combine room temperature eggs, strawberry puree, vanilla, strawberry extract, pink food coloring (if desired). Blend together with a fork.
- In the mixing bowl for your stand mixer, hand whisk the dry ingredients (cake flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, and salt) for 30 seconds to combine. With your mixer on low to medium speed, and using the paddle attachment, add the pieces of butter, a few pieces at a time, also add the oil at this time. Mix until the dry ingredients form moist crumbs that look like coarse sand.
- Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl. With the mixer on LOW speed, SLOWLY add ½ of the egg mixture/wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, increase the mixer to medium speed and beat for 1 ½ minutes, the batter will be thick and fluffy.
- Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl, then add the remaining egg mixture in 2 pourings, beating 20 seconds after each. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl and pour the cake batter into prepared pans.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake layer comes out clean. Let the cake cool in the pans on wire racks for 10 minutes. then turn out. This recipe makes about 7 ½ cups of batter.
Will this Strawberry Cake Recipe work for Cupcakes?
Yes, you can make strawberry cupcakes with this recipe, however they will have little to no dome. This true for many of our scratch cake recipes.
Decorating the Strawberry Cake
Decorate the Strawberry Cake however you like with your favorite strawberry frosting or a recipe that pairs well with strawberry flavor. We crumb coated our cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and then immediately piped the spiral patterns that you see in the photo using a star tip 21.
I love the piped-all-over look and it is also very forgiving! Simply start piping in the center and spiral outward, clockwise as many until you reach the size that you want. Repeat until the cake is finished ;0)
Doctored Cake Mix Version of Strawberry Cake
If you prefer a doctored boxed cake mix recipe, we have a great one for you: Strawberry Cake: Doctored Cake Mix Recipe.
This easy strawberry cake always gets rave reviews and uses real strawberries along with other flavorings for a delicious strawberry flavor.
More Strawberry Cakes
We've made several delicious strawberry cakes over the years! Here are just a few of our favorites. You can find our full collection of favorites here: Strawberry Cakes, Fillings, and Frostings!
Some of our favorites are our Homemade Strawberry Cake (which contains cream cheese in the cake batter for a velvety texture), Strawberry Bundt Cake, and Strawberry Pound Cake.
Our Strawberry Shortcake Cake (with pound cake layers and fresh strawberries) as well as our Strawberry Lemonade Cake are popular spring and summer cakes also!
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!
Strawberry Cake from Scratch
Equipment
Ingredients
- 4 large eggs room temperature ( can warm the eggs by putting in a bowl of warm water for 5 minutes)
- 1 ½ cups (340 g) strawberry puree .I used frozen strawberries that were lightly sweetened, you could also use fresh. Puree the strawberries in food processor or blender
- 1 teaspoon (4g) vanilla extract
- 2 teaspoons (8g) strawberry extract
- 2 to 3 drops AmeriColor Pink or your pink coloring of choice optional but makes for a prettier shade of pink
- 3 cups (342 g) cake flour
- 1 ¾ cups (350 g) granulated sugar
- 1 Tablespoon plus ½ teaspoon 14 g baking powder
- 1 teaspoon (6 g) salt
- ¼ cup (50g) vegetable oil
- 1 stick (113g) unsalted butter, slightly softened. (We cut butter into small pieces so it can be added slowly during mixing process. I cut mine into ½ to 1 inch slices onto waxed paper on the countertop, letting it soften only about 5 to 6 minutes.)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Grease and flour three 8 x 2 inch round pans
- In a separate bowl, combine eggs, strawberry puree, vanilla extract, strawberry extract, pink coloring (as desired). Blend together with a fork.
- In the bowl of your mixer, hand whisk the dry ingredients (cake flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, and salt) for 30 seconds to combine. With your mixer on low to medium speed, add the pieces of butter, a few pieces at a time, also add the oil at this time. Mix until the dry ingredients form moist crumbs that look like coarse sand.
- Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl. Method is important when using Reverse Creaming, so with the mixer on LOW speed, SLOWLY add ½ of the egg mixture to the dry ingredients, increase the mixer to medium speed and beat for 1 ½ minutes, the batter will be thick and fluffy.
- Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl, then add the remaining egg mixture in 2 pourings, beating 20 seconds after each. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl and pour into prepared pans.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let the cake cool in the pans 10 min. then turn out.
- Makes 7 ½ cups batter
Hi Leyla, This recipe makes 7 1/2 cups batter and that is the amount of batter you will need for one 12" round cake baked in a pan that is 2 inches deep. If you are going to have 2 layers, double the recipe. To make the puree you only need to put strawberries into a blender or food processor and process until the strawberries are smooth. I used frozen strawberries (slightly thawed) I sliced them for easier processing. You could also use fresh strawberries. This recipe uses the Reverse Creaming Method. If you have not used that mixing method, below is a link to Melissa's tutorial video.
https://www.mycakeschool.com/reverse-creaming-method-of-mixing-a-cake-video-tutorial/
You don't have to puree these on the stove? Is there a difference in between the two ways of doing? I've been researching strawberry cakes and they've all said to cook on stove and reduce but this recipe using the food processor is sooo much simpler.
Thanks for answering all of my endless questions I've had on this recipe.
Hi Robin, we call for reducing the puree in some of our recipes, but not in this particular one. We find that it gives enough strawberry flavor as it is since it can accommodate 1 1/2 cup of the puree.
Hi, is this recipe good for stacking? Does using the reverse creaming method give a denser cake for stacking?
I need to know if i double the recipe if that will be enough for a 1/2 sheet cake? Or do i need to triple it?
Hi Lotta, This recipe makes 7 1/2 cups batter. Is your pan 12x18? If so you will need between 14 to 16 cups, so you will be fine to double the recipe. Below are links to two charts giving cake batter amounts. I think you will find them helpful.
http://www.wilton.com/cake-serving-guide/cms-baking-serving-guide.html
I've made this cake many times and love it. My son wanted a blueberry cake and I got frustrated trying to find something suitable. So i ttied subbed thawed frozen blueberries for the strawberries and it turned out amazing!! The frozen blueberries, not fresh, gave it beautiful color.
Hi Lindsay, Great suggestion, I'm so happy it turned out well for you. Thank you for letting us know, the next time I make a blueberry cake I'm going to use your method. Thanks for posting.
This cake was FABULOUS! My 6 year old requested a strawberry cake this year for her birthday and it took quite some time to find a recipe that didn’t include artificial colors/flavorings. This cake is IT. Flavor was amazing, color was beautiful – the frosting was a light pink and SO flavorful. Love it. It’s going in the family cookbook. Thank you!
Hi Adriana, Thank you so much for you nice review of the recipe. We are very happy you enjoyed the cake.
Let start with this, finally, master this cake recipe. When I first have seen the recipe I didn't read the ingredients all the that good it took three attempts. the first attempt I use salted butter and reduced the strawberry puree. The cake came to out dry, 2nd attempt I use margarine, the cake came out with a greasy film. 3rd attempt ( I follow the ingredients and directions this time) perfect the only thing I did do differently was folding in egg white and put strawberry simply syrup between each layer. The cake came out perfect thank you for a fabulous strawberry cake recipe I use to make this two-tier bubblegum cake. I give this recipe 5 stars and more.
hi, making this tomorrow for my sons 7th birthday! will a 10 oz package of frozen strawberries be enough for 1 1/2 cups of puree?
Hi Theresa, I used 2 packages 10oz Birdseye sliced frozen strawberries. I did have some leftover. Hope you will enjoy the cake.
Hi. This looks so delicious! Will this cake recipe fit into 2 - 9 inch cake pans, or would it be too much batter?