artisanal strawberry cake

artisanal strawberry cake

What distinguishes this strawberry cake from others, if anything? Add the best white cake batter to the reduced strawberry puree.


This strawberry dessert amazed me beyond belief. My expectations were quite low after tasting only average from-scratch strawberry cakes for years. It was time to see how well my work tasted. The moment of truth arrived when you bit into the first pastel-pink forkful.


I shed happy tears. Or did I really cry because I was so messy after testing out all the strawberry cake recipes?


It's difficult for me to flavor cake with fresh strawberries without using artificial flavoring. Making a strawberry layer cake entirely out of actual strawberries was my aim. We're talking about strawberries in the frosting and throughout the cake. I made strawberry frosting with the aid of freeze-dried strawberries. I will address that below. Regarding strawberry cake, though? The flavor and texture of the food have never really impressed me.

Strawberry Cake Problems

It does work to chop up strawberries and fold them into cake batter, but then all you'll have is strawberry bits in vanilla cake.

There's potential when pureeing strawberries and putting them into cake batter, but the texture is never quite right. Too much liquid is present. Consider increasing the wheat amount to compensate for the liquid. Your cake is then very dense. And there's never enough flavor.

Though I would rather start with genuine strawberries, strawberry jam would work as well.


So how can we add just the right amount of strawberry flavor to cake batter without going overboard with liquid? CUT DOWN ON THE STRAWBERRIES. Ding, ding, ding! There is a winner.


Puree 1 pound of strawberries (ruby red). A food processor or blender is required for this phase as well as the frosting-making process.

Take that pureed strawberry and reduce it over low heat without adding anything else. This is the place where all the magic occurs, my friends. You want a lot of concentrated flavor in a small amount of liquid, as I mentioned earlier. We also use champagne in our champagne icing and mimosa cupcakes. Additionally, Guinness is used in Guinness chocolate cake.


Start with one cup of hot pink puree and thin it to half a cup. It will be very thick and crimson after half an hour. Instead of using a thinner puree, mix this thick and intensely concentrated strawberry flavor into your cake dough.


The cake batter will be mixed with the reduced strawberry puree. The seeds don't need to be strained beforehand because they vanish while the cake bakes.


The decreased strawberry puree must cool completely, therefore I recommend starting the day before. Simply store the reduced strawberry puree in the fridge for the entire night, then the next day, prepare the cake batter.



My white cake is where the cake batter begins. This cake with a vanilla flavor turned out to be the ideal foundation for a strawberry cake. I omitted some of the wet ingredients to make room for the 1/2 cup of reduced strawberries, but otherwise I followed the recipe exactly as written. The cake is fluffy, soft, springy, and light.


The cake batter will take on a beautiful pastel pink hue from the decreased strawberry puree; if desired, you can intensify that color with a tiny drop of pink or red food coloring. Naturally, not required. (I used one drop of gel food coloring in pink.) The cake batter should be silky and somewhat thick.