Strawberry Lemonade Cake
This delicious Strawberry Lemonade Cake is the perfect dessert for spring and summer celebrations!
This light and fruity dessert consists of moist strawberry cake layers glazed with lemon, filled with fresh strawberries, and frosted with lemon cream cheese buttercream.
Table of Contents
Why we Love It
There are many reasons to love this flavorful Strawberry Lemonade Cake. Here are just a few!
- The moist strawberry cake layers have a soft, fine crumb.
- Sweetness of strawberries and tartness of lemon are the perfect combination.
- Perfect for spring and summer birthday cakes, potlucks, picnics, and more. (Don't miss our other light and fruity cakes!)
How to Make Strawberry Lemonade Cake
You can find the full, printable recipe card further down in this post. Here is a quick rundown of our steps!
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour three 8 inch pans. We like to line the bottom of our pans with circles of parchment paper.
- Puree fresh or frozen strawberries in a blender or food processor to make 1 cup of strawberry puree. (We use strawberry puree in our Scratch Strawberry Cake and Strawberry Pound Cake recipes also!)
- In a medium bowl, whisk the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt for 30 seconds and set aside.
- In another bowl, combine the vegetable oil, one cup strawberry puree (we did not cook it down), and strawberry extract. Set aside.
- In the bowl of your mixer, add the butter and cream cheese and mix at medium speed until smooth.
- Gradually add the sugar and mix at medium speed for 2-3 minutes.
- Add the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing until the yellow of the yolk disappears. Add a touch of pink coloring gel if you'd like.
- With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and the strawberry mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture (that is 3 additions of the dry mixture, 2 additions of wet). Mix on low speed until blended.
- Divide the batter between the three prepared pans.
- Bake at 325 degrees F for 28-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Let cool for 5-10 minutes in the pans on a wire rack before turning out.
Lemon Simple Syrup
The lemon simple syrup is optional. The cake is delicious even without it, but it does give us an additional boost of lemon flavor!
This is a mixture of water and sugar, which is heated in a saucepan until the sugar is dissolved. The mixture is then removed from the heat, lemon juice is added, and the syrup is set aside to cool.
We like to use a silicone pastry brush to apply a light coating of the syrup to the cake layers as we assemble the cake. (If you are not freezing your cake layers, it is also fine to brush on the syrup while the cake layers are still warm.)
Lemon Cream Cheese Buttercream
This delicious lemon frosting is perfect with our strawberry cake layers! It is creamy, pipes perfectly and tastes great.
I consider this frosting a happy medium between our usual cream cheese frosting and lemon buttercream.
It is not quite as soft as our classic cream cheese frosting recipe because it contains more butter.
The frosting is flavored with fresh lemon juice as well as a bit of lemon extract and lemon zest.
Assembling the Cake
Now it is time to put it all together! Place the first cake layer on the cake plate or pedestal.
Next, if you are using the lemon simple syrup, use a silicone pastry brush to lightly apply it over the first layer. You don't want to soak the cake- just a light coating.
Then, apply a layer of lemon frosting and top with sliced fresh strawberries.
Add the next cake layer and repeat the steps. Top with the third cake layer and lightly brush the top and sides of the cake with the lemon syrup. You may have some leftover.
Fill in any gaps between the cake layers with frosting, then apply a thin layer of frosting over the entire cake. Chill in the freezer for 15 minutes to firm things up before applying the final coat of frosting.
Decorate the Cake!
Decorate the cake however you like. After adding the second coat of frosting, I heated a metal cake comb under hot water and then combed the frosted cake while rotating it on a turntable.
Then, I piped shells around the edge using a 1M piping tip. As you can see, I'm piping the shells side by side pointing inward. I piped two rows of shells and left the center smooth where the fruit will be. (We have a tutorial on piping with star tips!)
I topped the cake with fresh strawberries and thinly sliced lemon wedges. So pretty!
Recipe FAQs
More Lemon and Strawberry Cakes!
We've made many lemon and strawberry cakes over the years! Some of our favorites are Lemon Cake from Scratch, Strawberry Cake, Lemonade Cake, and Strawberry Bundt Cake.
Here are a few more popular lemon cakes!
Have you made this Cake? We would LOVE for you to leave a ⭐️ rating as well as a comment and photo below! We really appreciate your feedback!
Strawberry Lemonade Cake
Equipment
Ingredients
- 8 oz (226g)cream cheese, softened
- 1 ½ sticks (168g) unsalted butter, softened.
- 2 cups (400g) sugar
- 4 large eggs, room temperature (To save time, place eggs in a bowl of warm water for 5 minutes.)
- 3 cups (342g) cake flour (See notes for substitution if needed.)
- 2 teaspoons (8g) baking powder
- ½ teaspoon (3g) baking soda
- ½ teaspoon 3g salt
- 1 cup (243g) strawberry puree (You can use frozen strawberries or fresh.)
- 2 teaspoons (8g) strawberry extract (We used McCormick brand.)
- ¼ cup (54g) vegetable oil (We used canola oil.)
- A touch of pink coloring gel (optional)
Lemon Simple Syrup (optional)
- ½ cup sugar
- ⅓ cup water
- Juice and zest from one lemon approximately 3 tablespoons juice
Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
- 3 sticks (339g) unsalted butter, softened.
- 8 oz (226g) cream cheese, softened. (It is best to use full fat cream cheese.)
- ¼ cup (57g) lemon juice (Approximate amount of one lemon. Adjust to your liking)
- 1 ½ teaspoons (6g) Lemon Extract (Adjust amount to your liking.)
- zest of 1 lemon
- 7 ½ cups (863g) confectioners' sugar (sift then measure/weigh)
Additional Strawberries
- Fresh Strawberries- We used approximately 10 strawberries in between the layers as well as decoration on top. Adjust amount to your liking.
- Thinly sliced wedges of lemon for decoration
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour three 8 inch pans. We like to line the bottom of our pans with circles of parchment paper or waxed paper
- Puree fresh or frozen strawberries in a blender or food processor to make 1 cup.
- In a medium bowl, whisk the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt for 30 seconds and set aside.
- In another bowl, combine the oil, 1 cup strawberry puree, and strawberry extract. Set aside.
- In the bowl of your mixer, add the butter and cream cheese and mix at medium speed until smooth.
- Gradually add the sugar and mix at medium speed for 2-3 minutes.
- Add the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing until the yellow of the yolk disappears. Add a touch of pink coloring gel if you'd like.
- With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and the strawberry mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture (that is 3 additions of the dry mixture, 2 additions of wet). Mix on low speed until batter is combined and smooth.
- Divide the batter between the three prepared pans.
- Bake at 325 degrees F for 28-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Let cool for 5-10 minutes in the pans on a wire rack before turning out.
- This recipe makes approximately 8 cups of batter. Works for cupcakes also although there will be little to no dome, as with most scratch recipes.
- Lemon Simple Syrup
- In a saucepan over medium heat bring the water and sugar to a boil. Turn the heat to low and stir constantly until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is clear.
- Remove from heat and stir in the lemon juice and zest. Cool. If you want the mixture to be a thicker consistency, cook longer over low heat.
- Lemon Cream Cheese Buttercream
- Add the softened butter in the bowl of your mixer and mix until smooth
- Add pieces of cream cheese to the mixing bowl. The cream cheese should be soft enough
- that it combines easily into the butter mixture.
- Gradually add the powdered sugar. Add the lemon juice, lemon extract and zest. Do not over mix. The longer it is mixed the softer it becomes. If it becomes too soft, refrigerate 10 minutes or so and it will firm up.
- Makes about 5 cups of frosting.
- Assembling the Cake
- Place the first cake layer on the cake plate or pedestal. If using the lemon syrup, apply a thin layer over the top. (We do this with a silicone pastry brush).
- Spread the cake layer with lemon frosting. Top with thinly sliced strawberries. (We used about 3-4 sliced strawberries per layer). Top with the second cake layer and repeat (brush lightly with syrup, spread with lemon frosting, and apply sliced strawberries.) Add the top layer of cake, lightly brush with lemon syrup.
- Fill in any remaining gaps between the cake layers with frosting. Then, frost the cake with a very thin layer of frosting (crumb coat) and chill. We like to chill the cake for 10-15 minutes in the freezer (or longer in the refrigerator) to firm it up before applying the second coat of frosting.
- Decorate however you like! We combed the cake with a metal cake comb an added two rows of buttercream shells (pointing inward) using a 1M piping tip. We finished with a 1M piping tip.
- This cake should be refrigerated. Remove a few hours before serving to give the cake plenty of time to warm up for best flavor and texture.
Sounds delish! Looks beautiful too! Wonderful combination of flavours! Love it! :-)
Thanks Teri!!
This looks wonderful! Have you tried it with gluten free flour, and if so what brand?
Thank you!
Hi Tammy, we have not. If you give it a try, let us know what you think!
Have you tried this as cupcakes? If so did you use the simple syrup on the cupcakes?
We have not tried this as cupcakes, but it should work well. We like using the simple syrup for extra lemon flavor. However, in brushing on the simple syrup I think you would need to be careful not to get the paper cupcake liners wet as they may begin to pull away from the cupcakes.
Another option would be to fill the cupcake centers with the lemon frosting (in addition to adding the lemon frosting on top)- This would give a boost of lemon inside of the cupcakes and may eliminate the need for the lemon syrup. (To fill a cupcake, fill a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away with frosting, insert it halfway into the unfrosted cupcake, and squeeze for 2-3 seconds).
how long would you bake this if made into cupcakes? this recipe sounds amazing
Hi Kaity! I'm sorry that we missed this, but in case anyone is wondering the same, we usually bake our cupcakes at 350 for 15-18 minutes.
Recipe does not say when to add the lemon zest for the simple syrup?
Hi Steph! I've added that in- you stir it into the simple syrup when you stir in the lemon juice ;0) Hope you enjoy the recipe!
This cake was the star of the week shining on everyone . : )
I made this cake today for my father’s 90th birthday party. Everyone said it was the best cake they have ever tasted! The mix of fresh strawberries in both the purée and between the layers, along with the fresh lemon icing and tart simple syrup made this cake a winner! I will definitely make it again. The only change I made was not to include the lemon extract and the icing was perfect without it. Thank you for sharing!
Hi Emmie! Thanks so much for your feedback, we're so glad that you all loved the cake!