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
Hello , can I half the recipe for smaller cake ?
Hi Trish, It should be fine to half the recipe.
Hello, just a quick question. I’ve made this cake twice now and each time I find that the batter doesn’t rise, leaving me with a dense cake. I follow the directions, what else could be going wrong here?
Hi Kat, I am sorry you have had a problem with the recipe. I think the reverse creaming method is causing a problem for you. It could be that when adding 1/2 of the liquid, you are not adding it slowly enough. Problems also occur if the batter is beaten above medium speed or beaten for too long. You might prefer using the conventional mixing method. In the comment section on Sept. 1, 2017 I posted directions for baking this recipe using the conventional mixing method.
Does this cake (uniced) freeze well?
Hi Michelle, Yes, you can freeze the cake layers. It is best to place each cake layer on it own cake cardboard circle (wrapping the cake circle in aluminum foil protects it for future use). Cover the cake with plastic wrap and aluminum foil to keep it air tight. We have had success freezing for 2 months.
Hey Bebe... I see your comment stating the conventional mixing directions are posted on Sept1, 2017...but I don't see a comment on that date... Would you mind posting those again? Also, does that method produce the same results in lift and texture? Thanks so much!
Hi DeAnna, It is posted on Sept. 1, 2017, but I don't mind posting it again for you. I hope you will enjoy the recipe.
Strawberry Cake (Conventional Creaming Method)
1 1/2 cups (340g) strawberry puree — I used frozen strawberries that were slightly sweetened, you could also use
fresh strawberries, puree the thawed strawberries in a food processor or blender.
3 cups (300g) cake flour **if you do not have cake flour see note below.
1Tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon (14g) baking powder
1 teaspoon (6g) salt
1 stick (113g) unsalted butter
1 3/4 cup (350g) sugar
4 large eggs
1/4 cup (50g) vegetable oil
1 teaspoon (4g) vanilla
2 teaspoons (8g) strawberry extract
3 to 4 drops (or more) AmeriColor pink or pink coloring of your choice (optional but will give you a prettier pink cake)
*If using all purpose flour (plain in UK) you can use the following substitution: each cup of flour in the recipe, remove 2 Tablespoons flour and replace with 2 Tablespoons cornstarch. For this recipe measure out 3 cups all purpose flour, remove 6 Tablespoons and replace with 6 Tablespoons cornstarch, whisk to blend.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
Grease and flour three 8 x 2 inch round pans - I recommend using a circle of wax or parchment paper in the bottom of
each pan. Cakes in fruit have a tendency to stick to the pan.
In a medium bowl add the flour, baking powder and salt, whisk to blend and set aside.
In the bowl of your mixer, add the butter and mix until softened and smooth. Slowly add the sugar and mix on medium speed 4 to 5 minutes.
Add the oil and blend
Add the eggs one at a time and mix until the yellow of each egg is blended in
Add the vanilla and strawberry extract, blend
Alternately, add the flour mixture and the strawberry puree, beginning and ending with the flour mixture (3 additions of flour and 2 of strawberry puree)
Add 2 to 3 drops AmeriColor pink coloring or your pink coloring of choice (optional but you will have a prettier shade of
pink for your cake)
Pour cake batter into prepared pans and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Check at 25 minutes
Thanks so much Bebe... for whatever reason I couldn’t get to that page on the comments.. I appreciate it!!
I made the cake and it’s moist but the colour didn’t come out pink and I added three drops of pink food colouring?
Hi Jaimee, I'm sorry about that. The color in your picture looks like chocolate so I'm sure that was disappointing. The 1 1/2 cups strawberry puree adds some color depending on the ripeness of the strawberries. We used AmeriColor gel color to give us a deeper pink. Was your food coloring a liquid color? Gel color will give you a more intense shade of pink. When adding the color your cake batter should look pink (the pink lightens a bit when baked).
You said Grease and flour three 8 x 2 inch round pans. Will the 7 1/2 cups fill those pans to make even tall layers? But on you july 30,2018 comment you said 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. I want to make sure I use the right pans for 3 layers. Thank you!