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
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
What if I used only 1 tsp baking powder ? I didn’t read recipe well Do u recommend making the cake over ?
Hi Beth, I'm sorry! You have probably baked your layers by now - my guess is that they would not rise very much with that amount of leavening although I'm sure the flavor would still be good.
Ok. Thank you for the response Yes they are baked and in the freezer On another note your pumpkin cake is wonderful!
Thank you! And I hope that you enjoy the strawberry cake too! xo
You’re welcome
Hi
Can I use strawberry emulsion instead of extract?
Hi Jordyn, we have not used emulsion but it should work well for you.
Im making them in cupcake form. So you have an estimate for how long they need to be put in?
Hi Andie, For standard size cupcakes, bake at 350 degrees for 15 to 18 minutes. The cupcakes will bake with a low dome as with almost all scratch recipes.
If you want a dome on your cupcakes bake them at 415 degrees for the first 7 minutes then turn them down for the remaining time. This even works for scratch mix.
I love this recipe!! Have mad many times and people love it! Have you tried with other fruit puree? Blueberries? Raspberries? I am thinking about giving it a try!
Hi Kp, so happy to hear it! We haven't experimented much with different purees for this recipe. We do have a recipe for Blueberry Cake & one for Raspberry Cake that we really like- they aren't based on this recipe, but we think they are delicious too! ;0) -
https://www.mycakeschool.com/raspberry-layer-cake-from-scratch/
https://www.mycakeschool.com/blueberry-cake/
I want to make this cake and ice it ahead of time - will it freeze ok like that?
Hi Nicky, You can complete the cake and frost in buttercream or a cream cheese frosting. Refrigerate the completed cake for 2 hours or until the frosting is firm to the touch. Cover the cake with two layers of plastic wrap then aluminum foil because it need to be airtight. Now freeze for up to two months. When ready to use defrost in the refrigerator or on the countertop. Once condensation begins to form on the aluminum foil you can unwrap and allow to continue to thaw. You will want to remove the plastic wrap while the frosting is still firm so it will not stick to the plastic wrap.
Hi there,
Do I need to put the purée in a sauce pan and cook down to 1 1/2 cups or do I essentially just blend up the strawberries and use that as purée? (no need to cook)
Hi Amanda, we did not cook the strawberries down. I hope that you enjoy it!
Hello! Do you strain the strawberry puree to get rid of the seeds?
Hi Shelby, no we do not strain the puree.
Hello,
I wanted to try this recipe but I wanted to know if a strawberry reduction could be used instead of the puree. could I use part milk and part reduction?
Hi Tish- It would be an experiment but it seems that if you are using 1 1/2 cup of reduction or reduction/milk combination in place of the 1 1/2 cup puree, it should be fine! ;0)
Hi Tish! Have you tried to use the reduction? Lemme know, i am thinking of the same thing as it is all i have available. :)
So I tried this recipe but used Smuckers Strawberry Preserves. I also did not mix for 1 1/2 minutes after adding the egg mixture to the flour mixture the first time because I was afraid I'd over develop the gluten in the flour. I mixed until it was thoroughly mixed for about 30 seconds. Then added the rest of the egg mixture and mixed and then finished mixing with my spatula.
I was making cupcakes out of this recipe. I got 25 cupcakes but I may have overfilled the cups a bit. They all sank in the middle. Like a little over 1/4 inch sink. This happened to all of them. I find this happens with ANY RECIPE I use PRESERVES with.
Can you advise?? Thanks so much!
Hello I would love to make it is it okay to use 7*3 tins 2 of them
Hi Sharlet, I don't see why not! You may need to bake them a few minutes more.
Could this be made with margarine? I'm trying to make a dairy free cake for my friend's birthday.
Hi Pam! We just haven't tried it and so I can't say for sure- I've read that it could change the texture but let us know how it goes if you try it!
I placed a question on this recipe on or around August 10th or 11th. But I think it may have been overlooked because other questions have been answered since.
Thank you very much.