Strawberry Swirl Pound Cake

This Strawberry Swirl Pound Cake is a slice of heaven, with it's fine crumb, moist texture, and delicious strawberry flavor.

It is the perfect dessert no matter what the season, but we especially love it for summer celebrations!

You may have noticed when scrolling though our Recipes section that we love pound cake - we've made several over the years from our whipping cream pound cake to double chocolate pound cake, strawberry pound cake, just to name a few!

I could have a slice every day and never get tired of it!

If you love pound cakes also, you are in luck. This strawberry swirl cake is easy to make, and the swirls of strawberry not only add a burst of refreshing flavor, but they also make for a beautiful slice!

How to Make Strawberry Swirl Pound Cake

This recipe is based on our whipping cream pound cake recipe, but a cup of the cake batter is reserved and transformed into strawberry batter for swirling.

You can find the full, printable recipe card further down in this post, but here is a quick rundown of our steps!

Prepare the Pan and Preheat: Grease and flour a tube pan. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F

Whisk Dry Ingredients: In a separate bowl whisk the cake flour, salt, and baking powder to combine. Set aside for later.

Butter & Sugar: Cream the butter on medium speed with the paddle attachment of your mixer, gradually add the sugar and mix until lightened and fluffy (About 4-5 minutes).

Eggs: Add the room temperature eggs one at a time blending after each until the yellow of the yolk is blended.

Vanilla Extract & Whipping Cream: Add the vanilla extract to the cup of whipping cream.

Alternating Dry and Wet Additions: With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture alternately with the whipping cream. Begin and end with the dry ingredients. Add the dry ingredients three times and the whipping cream twice. After the last addition, mix just until blended.

Prepare the Strawberry Swirl Cake Batter: Scoop one cup of the batter into a small bowl. Combine the ⅓ cup of Seedless Strawberry preserves/jam, strawberry extract (or 1 teaspoon Strawberry Jello powder), and red coloring gel (optional- add to reach desired color). Stir until uniform in color.

Fill the Pan: Alternate layers of vanilla cake batter and strawberry batter into the prepared tube pan or bundt pan. I did three layers of vanilla batter with two layers of strawberry batter in between. (Alter however you like). Run a knife through the batter 2-3 times to help with the swirling.

Time to Bake!: Bake at 325 degrees for approximately 60-65 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Baking times can vary and so peek in as it approaches the 1 hour mark. If the top of the cake begins to get too dark, cover loosely with a piece of aluminum foil.

This makes approximately 8 cups of batter.

Allow to cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before turning out onto serving plate.

Decorating the Strawberry Swirl Pound Cake

Today, we used our very easy vanilla glaze to decorate the cake. It is a combination of powdered sugar, a bit of milk, a pinch of salt, vanilla extract-- for even more strawberry flavor you could substitute strawberry extract if you'd like!

You can adjust the extract amount to your liking as well as the amount of sugar or milk to achieve the flavor and consistency that you are looking for.

We've used variations of this glaze for many of our cakes- so simple and pretty! To apply the glaze, I spooned it into a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away. This will give you the most control. However, if you'd rather, you can drizzle it on with a spoon.

We topped the cake off with fresh strawberries!

Can this Pound Cake be Frozen?

Whether you are baking in advance for a special occasion, a cake order, or you are lucky enough to have leftover pound cake, this cake freezes beautifully!

After baking our pound cake, we allow it to cool for about 10 minutes in the tube or bundt pan on a wire rack before flipping it out onto a foil-wrapped cake board. We then wrap the pound cake with a layer of plastic wrap and follow with a tightly wrapped layer of aluminum foil. Into the freezer it goes!

If you are freezing a freshly baked cake, go ahead and wrap & freeze it while it is still a bit warm. We do this with all of our cakes when time allows as it makes them even more moist!

Thawing the Cake: When you are ready to thaw the pound cake, remove it from the freezer and leave the wrapping on.

Place it on the countertop until condensation forms on the foil (about 30-45 minutes). Then unwrap and continue to thaw.

The cake will taste as fresh as the day it was baked! You can also freeze leftover slices individually in the same way- wrap with plastic wrap, foil, and into the freezer. These individual slices will thaw quickly on the kitchen counter- but you can zap them in the microwave to speed the process along!

More Pound Cakes to Try!

In addition to this strawberry swirl pound cake recipe, make sure to keep these other delicious pound cake recipes in mind also!

Thanks so much for stopping by! Make sure to also check out our Cake Recipes section. We have delicious cake recipes from scratch as well as lots of cake mix recipes!

If you are interested in cake decorating, we have hundreds of free creative cake decorating tutorials as well! We hope that you enjoy scrolling through. Come back again soon!