This is the best Strawberry Cake recipe and it’s made from scratch! It’s a fresh, delicious cake that’s been a family favorite dessert for many years!
Strawberry Cake has to be one of my family’s favorite cakes – especially my husband’s. As much as I love my Grandmother Verdie’s Strawberry Cake recipe, I wanted to make one that I made from scratch. And I must say that we all love this updated version of my family’s classic recipe.
Strawberry Cake Recipe
Quick, easy, delicious and made from just a few simple ingredients, this strawberry cake is definitely a keeper of a recipe.
The strawberry flavor is light, with bites of fresh strawberries throughout. The cake also has a light pink tint rather than an over the top pink coloring that many strawberry cakes get from the addition of flavored gelatin to the mix.
So, if you are looking for a strawberry cake option that is made from scratch, this is for you! While it is perfect for just about any occasion at my house, it is especially nice for showers, weddings, birthdays, and luncheons.
How to Make Strawberry Cake
To make this fresh and scrumptious cake, I use these ingredients:
- Fresh Strawberries, hulled
- Unsalted Butter
- Shortening
- Granulated Sugar
- Eggs
- All-purpose flour
- Baking powder
- Salt
- Whole Milk
- Buttermilk
- Vanilla Extract
- Natural food coloring (optional)
- For my Frosting, I use my Strawberry Buttercream Frosting.
First, preheat the oven to 350º F.
Prepare three 9-inch round cake pans with nonstick baking spray or prepare with butter and flour. Remove any excess flour.
Blend the strawberries in a blender on medium speed until pureed, about 3 minutes. This should result in 3/4 cup strawberry puree. Set aside.
Then, cream (mix) together the butter and shortening with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
Next, add the sugar slowly, one cup at a time. Make sure to fully incorporate each cup of sugar before adding another cup.
Then add eggs one at a time, making sure to fully incorporate each egg before adding another egg.
Sift together the dry ingredients – flour, baking powder, and salt – in a medium bowl.
Pour milks, vanilla, and the strawberry puree into a large measuring cup and whisk together with a fork.
Then, alternately add the flour mixture (dry ingredients) and the milk mixture to the creamed-together butter and shortening, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients.
Gently stir all ingredients until well combined. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, making sure to have all ingredients well mixed.
Evenly distribute the batter between the cake pans and place the pans into the preheated oven. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the cake releases from the edges of the pan and springs back to a light touch. You can follow my tips for how to tell when your cake is done.
Remove the pans from the oven and allow to cool in the cake pans for about 10 minutes. Don’t allow the cooked cake to sit in the cake pans longer than around 10 minutes after removing from oven. Turn the cakes out onto wire racks and let them finish cooling completely.
After the cake has completely cooled, frost with Strawberry Buttercream Frosting and enjoy!
Note: I’ve tested this cake recipe many times both with strawberry syrup and strawberry puree. After many tests, I’ve found that the strawberry puree works best in this cake. You get all the delicious strawberry flavor when using the puree and the cake consistently sets better than it when using the syrup. With the strawberry puree you get a much lighter crumb for the cake texture. If you’d like a more pronounced pink color to your strawberry cake, you can use a little natural coloring.
Here’s my Strawberry Cake recipe. I hope you love it!
Strawberry Cake Recipe
Ingredients
- 12 medium (144 g) strawberries, hulled
- 1 cup (226 g) unsalted butter, , room temperature
- 1/2 cup (92 g) shortening
- 3 cups (594 g) granulated sugar
- 5 large (250 g) eggs, room temperature
- 3 cups (360 g) all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons (8 g) baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon (0.7 g) kosher salt
- 1/2 cup (113.5 g) whole milk, room temperature
- 1/2 cup (113.5) buttermilk, room temperature
- 2 teaspoons (9.4 g) vanilla extract
- 1 – 2 (0.1 g) drops natural food coloring, optional
- Strawberry Buttercream Recipe
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350º F. Prepare three 9-inch round cake pans with nonstick baking spray or prepare with butter and flour. Remove any excess flour.
- Blend the strawberries in a blender on medium speed until pureed, about 3 minutes. This should result in 3/4 cup strawberry puree. Set aside.
- Cream together the butter and shortening with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Slowly add the sugar, one cup at a time, making sure to fully incorporate each cup before adding another. Add eggs one at a time, making sure to fully incorporate each egg before adding another.
- Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Pour milks, vanilla, and the strawberry puree into a measuring cup and whisk together with a fork. Alternately add the flour mixture and the milk mixture to the butter and shortening, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients.
- Gently stir all ingredients until well combined. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, making sure to have all ingredients well mixed.
- Evenly distribute the batter between the cake pans and place the pans into the preheated oven. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the cake releases from the edges of the pan and springs back to a light touch. Remove the pans from the oven and allow to cool in the cake pans for about 10 minutes. Turn the cakes out onto wire racks and let them cool completely.
- Frost cake with strawberry buttercream frosting.
Notes
If you would like a more pronounced pink color to your cake, add 1 – 2 drops of natural pink or red food coloring to the batter.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Robyn xo
From the Add a Pinch recipe archives. Originally published July 2013.
Well then she would give away the secret to making the cake perfectly. I tried the original recipe and it was a hot mess. The icing slid right off the cake on top of the cake being dense. I wish her recipes worked because the pictures sure look great. I’m a seasoned baker and can make many involved recipes even the famously difficult French Macaron so it has to be the recipe is not correct, sadly.
Hi Carol,
I’m so sorry this recipe didn’t work for you! I’ve not had problems with this cake when baking it by my recipe. Thank you.
I baked this recipe last week, and it didn’t turn out. It was dense also. I’m not sure what I did wrong. I need more detailed instructions or more pictures showing step-by-step. It was disappointing because every other recipe I’ve tried on here has been great!
Brittany, I made this recipe a couple days ago and I followed the instructions, nearly to a tee. It turned out beautifully. My kids loved it. I think that doing the recipe in the order mentioned is really important, as well as adding the ingredients grouped together as instructed. Baking is such a science. Something a little off can create a disaster. I am sure you know this from your experience!
The things I changed: made this with 2 cups of sugar instead of 3. It was still very sweet for our tastes, so next time I would cut down to 1 and 1/4 C. I didn’t have shortening on had, so I used solidified coconut oil, which I would NOT recommend. The coconut flavor was too strong and fought against the strawberry flavor. I also added 1 tablespoon of sugar to the strawberries before pureeing. Pureed strawberries can be really tart, so the sugar helps to really intensify that good strawberry flavor we are looking for. I also had only two 9″ cake pans, so divided it in two and baked an extra 12 min. The cakes puffed up beautifully in the oven, and did come back down. The cake was cooked all the way, but it was a bit dense. However, it was not so dense as if something went wrong. Still a very velvety texture, which is rich but lovely. The Strawberry Buttercream frosting was REALLY DIVINE. I added about 1/3 C of strawberry puree because I wanted it as strawberry as possible. It turned out SO GOOD. I could just eat it with a spoon.
I’m going to make this for Mother’s Day, and what I will change:
1) cut the sugar down for our family’s preference
2) Add about 2 C of egg white meringue to lighten the texture
3) use real shortening instead of coconut oil
4) MAKE MORE FROSTING!!
And I will let you know how it turns out!!!
One last comment: I did refrigerate the cakes and frosting overnight before assembling. I saw the other persons’ comments about the frosting sliding right off. I did not have that problem whatsoever with everything chilled. The cake turned out looking exactly like Robyn’s picture. So I am proud that we did good!
Just made this cake today. It is awesome! I followed the recipe exactly, and added a teaspoon of strawberry extract as stated in the notes. This recipe will totally replace the one I’ve been using. Thanks Robyn for posting this great recipe.
This is a phenomenal recipe! I made this for my family and they loved it! The cake was moist and rich and absolutely delicious. I’ve never made a strawberry cake before but this recipe was super easy to follow and turned out perfectly. I wouldn’t have changed a thing! The icing recipe is also soooo good!
I made this cake for my 8 year old to replace the horrible recipe I found on another site and my kids absolutely loved it. It was moist and soooo good. I chose to do a strawberry whipped cream topping instead of the buttercream and it was awesome. Thanks for saving my 8 year old son birthday!!!
This is delicious! Have you ever tried it with cake flour?
Is this the same recipe you had up before? I thought it used the strawberry syrup as well?
Hi Angela,
This is the updated recipe. The original did include the strawberry syrup, but some were having issues with the cake. I tested and retested and retested again, and found that the weight of the strawberry syrup could have been causing the problems. This is the updated version. I hope you enjoy it! xo
Beautiful and looks yummy! 🙂
Can this be made into cupcakes? If so, do I use the same oven temp?
Yes you should be able to. It will should make around 24 cupcakes. Use the same temp. Just check it at 15 min. Cupcakes cook a lot faster.
can this be made into cupcakes?