pink lady cake
Alas, they left us with no dessert, and more poignantly, no pretty pink princess birthday cakes (the nerve!), and so when the call arose on Monday to make one for Liz’s (of spaghetti and meatball photography fame) birthday, I jumped in with two feet.
Because everyone has a pretty pink princess in their life, be she four or 34, and when that pretty pink princess has a birthday, you need a cake that is appropriate. And there is nothing more darling and swell, more coquettish and eyelash-batting, than a pink lady cake. Simply nothing.
Of course, the process of getting from “my favorite cake growing up was called a Pink Lady Cake” to the recipe you see below, was surprisingly difficult. You see, the Pink Lady Cake my friend knew and loved, as outlined by AllRecipes and a dozen other sites, is a white cake mix with a box of strawberry Jell-O and bag of frozen strawberries mixed in. And while I do not judge you if you wish to put such things (oh, there I go being all passive-aggressive again) in your birthday cakes, I was bent on finding a more natural way to approach things.
I looked in The Joy of Cooking. I checked out Martha. I Googled until the letters “P” and “L” on my laptop were worn down to nubs. I begged some of my Monday lunch dates for leads. And then? Then I opened my favorite cake book in the entire world (yes, I know I sound like a broken record but if you like to bake birthday and celebration cakes, step to it, get this book) and le voila! A white cake with pureed strawberries.
Like every recipe I have tried in the book, the cake was surprisingly easy to make and tasted better than every white cake I’d tried previously–richer, and more buttery. It also has a tremendous “ta-da!” effect, clocking in at easily six inches tall, knocking into the lid of the cake box, so eager to make its entrance, so like a princess.
Oh, and it tasted so very darling, and pink, if such a thing is possible.
Not the Celebration Cake you were looking for? You’re in luck! We have a whole index of other ones over here.
One year ago: Pumpkin Butter and Pepita Granola
Two years ago: Spinach Quiche
Thanks: Be to Ms. Pixxiestails.com for letting us hijack her camera when we forgot ours!
Pink Lady Cake [Strawberry Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and Filling]
The cake recipe is adapted from Sky High, and the only thing I would change next time would be to add a drop or two of red food coloring because when cake is called Pink Lady, well, it should really be pink.
The cream cheese frosting is not from the book (which has a Swiss buttercream-based one I am eager to try when I am not rushing to finish) but a classic, standard recipe. I have upped the amount of cream cheese frosting from what I used, which you can see is spread a tad thin. Pretty pink princesses should never be deprived of fluffy vanilla cream cheese frosting on their birthdays, you know?
For the cake
4 1/2 cups cake flour
3 cups sugar
5 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups pureed frozen strawberries*
8 egg whites
2/3 cup milk
1 to 2 drops red food dye, if using (to make the pink color pop more)
For the cream cheese frosting
3 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks; 6 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
3 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Make the cake
1. Preheat the oven to 350»F. Butter three 9-inch round or 8-inch square cake pans. Line with parchment or waxed paper and butter the paper.
2. Put the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large mixer bowl. With the electric mixer on low speed, blend for 30 seconds. Add the butter and strawberry puree and mix to blend the ingredients. Raise the speed to medium and beat until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes; the batter will resemble strawberry ice cream at this point. (Deb note: I must warn you not to try the batter at this point. Not even a smear of it. How unbearably good it is will shock you, and lead to more dipping. Only you can stop this from coming to pass.)
3. In another large bowl, whisk together the egg whites, milk and red food dye, if using, to blend. Add the whites to the batter in two or three additions, scraping down the sides of the bowl well and mixing only to incorporate after each addition. Divide the batter among the three prepared pans.
4. Bake the cakes for 30 to 34 minutes, or until a cake tester or wooden toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Allow the layers to cool in the pans for 10 to 15 minutes. Invert and turn out onto wire racks and peel off the paper liners. Let stand until completely cooled before assembling the cake, at least an hour.
Make the cream cheese frosting
5. In a medium bowl, cream together the cream cheese and butter until creamy. Mix in the vanilla, then gradually stir in the confectioners’ sugar. Store in the refrigerator after use.
Frost and assemble the cake
6. Place one cake layer on a cake board or platter. Tucking scraps of waxed paper under the edges of the cake will protect the board or plate from any mess created while frosting the cake. (I forgot, as can be clearly seen above.) Spread about 2/3 cup frosting over the layer, spreading it to the edge. Repeat with the second layer. Add the top layer and frost the top and sides of cake with remaining frosting, reserving a small amount if you wish to tint it and pipe a decoration on the cake. If not, you can decorate the cake top with thinly-sliced strawberries. Remove the waxed strips to reveal and neat, clean cake board.
7. Serve with pink candles on pink plates to the sort of person who dreams in pink. I suspect you know at least one.
* Huntsman notes that it may seem surprising that frozen strawberries are used here, but they’re always available and their quality is consistent. I suspect you could swap fresh ones, but given that the ones in the store in October are so lackluster, and cruelly unlike the astounding ones we had in Paris last week, I went with her suggestion. This will be from about half a one-pound bag.














Gorgeous! One of the reasons I check your site everyday is to look at the pretty pictures of food – they say so much more sometimes than just the recipe. And I haven’t had pink cake in years – looks yummy!!
I got Sky High for my birthday after seeing all your beautiful cakes here on SK. I wonder how many copies have sold thanks to you? :)
I can’t wait to dig in–unfortunately there aren’t many celebration cake-worthy events coming up for us. My birthday’s the last one in our family until February! I think I’ll have to make one for Thanksgiving in lieu of pumpkin pie… Hmmm….
I am filing this one away for when *fingers crossed* I get to have a girl. I’m already fantasizing about how I’ll serve it at a princess birthday party someday…
Just today i was thinking to myself that i really want a pink, girly, tiered cake for my thirtieth birthday! Perfect timing, can’t wait to try it out.
We’ve never even gone near boxed cake mix in my family. Even the mention of it and jello is painful to me. This though, sounds lovely.
Pink makes everything taste better!
I need to make more friends, if only to have more people for which to bake cakes. This is LOVELY.
Did you use the couple drops of food coloring in that cake? It looks so natural, light, and delicious! I know just the girly girl I want to bake this for!
I love the tip to use parchment paper on the bottom of the cake pans. I tried that method on a cake last weekend (just so happens it was the chocolate peanut butter cake!) and it worked wonders!
I’ve definitely got to pick up a copy of that book. :)
I love this girly cake! The combination of flavors sounds perfect, and I love the addition of pureed strawberries.
Awesome recipe:
“5 1/4 teaspoons baking power”
A little touch of magic to match the princess, huh? ;)
I didn’t use the red food dye but I would next time. It’s pink, but I wanted it to be pinker.
I also grew up eating this wonderful cake, and it was also the box version that you described. My great, great aunt always made the cake for us, and it was so wonderful! However, instead of making a cream cheese frosting, she made regular vanilla cake icing and poured in the extra juice from the frozen strawberries to make an absolutely delicious strawberry frosting. Next time I make this cake, I think I might try making your homemade cake with her version of the icing. YUM!
Since I have those same dessert plates from Rosanna, I guess I’ll just have to make this cake!
Deb, I must know. Does it TASTE like strawberries? I have searched high and low for a strawberry cupcake recipes (complete with strawberry cream cheese frosting) that doesn’t taste like cooked jammy nastiness. Love at First Bite Cupcakery in Berkeley, CA has one that I heart (and was my wedding cupcake) but I can’t figure out how to reproduce it. Could this pink lady be it??????
What a beautiful cake! It looks like the perfect cake for a celebration! After seeing several cakes on blogs from this book, I decided that I just have to buy it!
Oh, yay! When I saw your Tweet looking for a pink-lady recipe, I searched all my old cookbooks from my aunt. When I came up with nothing I thought “oh man, I’m kinda sad to think that pink lady cake won’t be posted on smitten kitchen.” I guess I figured you’d give up or make it with the boxed stuff (and of course not post it) But you are a more persistent girl than I, Deb!! :D
Looks so pretty!
What a beautiful cake. I’ve never come across a cake with pureed strawberries in the batter, but it sounds absolutely delicious!
Instead of (expensive) parchment to line your cake pans, try 2 layers of (free)newspaper, cut to fit fairly close (but not necessary to be perfect). I’ve done it at least 5000 times in my decorating career, and never once had a problem removing the cooled cakes. (The inner, unused sections of the paper are virtually sterile, at least as clean as any parchment, and besides never touch the baked cake since a thin skim of crumb is removed with either type of paper.)
I love this, it is so pretty in pink :)
gorgeous. i bet it’s delicious too.
When I was young I always wanted a pink cake for my birthday. I think my mom just made it from a box. That book looks awesome. I’ll have to get it. Beautiful cake for princess.
Your photos make me want to eat my computer! LOVE it!
What a gorgeous cake. There’s always room for something pink in everyone’s lives :)
Oh dear this looks dangerous. Cake and it’s pink! I need to leave your website now.
Wow, this looks so good!! I can’t resist anything with strawberries. I bet the recipe would make some adorable cupcakes too. I might need to experiment over the weekend…
Hey Deb, firstly thanks for several years of delicious entertainment, I lurk and drool, and lurk and drool some more.
Secondly a question for you, one I’ve been meaning to ask for ages. You strike me as a lady who likes precision. How do you cope with the rather imprecise nature of the cup measuring system used for baking in the US? I’m of the British persuasion, and as you know we weigh baking ingredients using the metric system, so the quantities are always pretty much spot on (bar variations in scales’ accuracy). This consistency isn’t the case with cups and spoons, where you can get quite wide variations caused by all sorts of factors, and I find that when I do bake using the US system, results can be variable in quality. Do you find this? And if so how do you deal with this?Is it a case of practise making for more consistency? Apologies for long and nerd like question, but I am curious about this.
Pretty!!! It reminds me of the movie “A little princess” when Sara says, “All girls are princesses.” Indeed, we are.
Tomorrow is my birthday and I want this for my birthday cake.
How beautiful!! I love it – “Because everyone has a pretty pink princess in their life, be she four or 34.” Hate to think where the world would be if there weren’t pretty pink princesses to brighten our days!
I loved the chocolate peanut butter cake but i was still debating on whether or not to buy the Sky High cookbook, but now i’m completely sold..
this cake looks super cute and really delicious, but what if your (my) favorite color is purple? pureed bluberries, perhaps? i think my next birthday cake will be Crazy Purple Lady Cake! :}
This is gorgeous and sounds wonderful!
It really is precious. And looks so sweetly delicious.
i have the book now and have baked a baby shower cake and two birthday cakes using the recipes and the results were fantastic. thanks for the recommend and the pink lady cake is beautiful!
While I completely DISagree about and thus question your statement about the ubiquitous existence of “pretty pink princesses” (ugh! can we say stereotypes about females?!), I do think this cake looks delicious. I, however, would make it look a little less pink. I never did like that color nor the idea of being a stereotypical princess, but that is just me hehe.
I don’t think the concept of pretty pink princesses reinforces stereotypes about women; I have plenty of gay male friends that would be utterly delighted to have pink princess cakes on their birthdays!
Deb, I salute you for transforming the jello cake into something quite spectacular.
Okay, I can dig the newsprint-in-place of parchment, but for artists out there with pads of tracing paper, hear me: tracing paper is parchment paper! You can use it!
This cake is the girliest. Next girly birthday I bake for I will make this!
Your timing could not be more perfect. My best best best friend in the whole world is celebrating her 21st birthday this weekend, and she is the only 20-something girl I know who still lives and dreams in various shades of pink, haha. I pretty much have to make this now. =)
Kudos for persevering! This cake is adorable! I had never heard of a Pink Lady cake before. Now, I want one too!
Ahhh that’s really lovely. And I don’t even like the color pink! Usually.
ohmigod ohmigod!!!! pink cake is the only cake I’ll accept for my birthday! How fantastic. I just have to figure who is going to make to make it for me (cause it’s MY birthday and I’ll force people to make cakes for me if I want to).
AND ps Cmoore, I don’t like pink either, except in cakes!
Samphire: THANK YOU for the question! I’ve been wondering the same thing for a long time. I did research awhile ago and came up with a variety of answers. I use a weight of 140 grams per cup of all-purpose flour and 130 grams per cup of cake flour.
Yay you did it! We knew you would. It looks perfect.
Hurray, perfect timing! My daughter turns five on Halloween and asked for a pink cake, but I didn’t want to just drop in food coloring; I wanted that real strawberry flavor, too. Thanks, Deb.
Goodness, this cake is lovely! I am a lover of all things pink, especially sweets. Yum!
Gorgeous! That cake looks fantastic! Perfect, as always!
Cheers,
Rosa
Does it have a nice strawberry flavor or is it just pink? I bet one teaspoon of strawberry (or cherry or raspberry) jello would give you enough pink color if you don’t have any food coloring. I never seem to have it anymore.
The cake looks luscious. I know ‘they’ say box cake mixes are so easy, but what is so hard about measuring out some butter, sugar,eggs, flour and milk? You have to measure oil and water for a cake mix..what’s a few more ingredients for a scratch cake! They are SO much better.
I’ve never heard of a Pink Lady cake….but, ohhhhhh, methinks I might have to make it now…seeing as how I, too, own the same book! Thanks so much for sharing as always and I’m so glad you had a wonderful vacation in Paris!!!!!
Deb, I would NEVER think such a thing – have you seen all the sweets that I feature on MY blog???? I think I may have you beat, haha ;-)
LOOOVE that cake!! So lovely!!
What a lovely girly sweet!! The only pink ladies that I’ve ever had were the kind made with gin ;)
Re, the strawberry flavor: It is present, but not very, very strong. The contrast with the cream cheese frosting brings it out even more.
Samphire — Ack! I find it so annoying actually; your hunch is correct. Not only is measuring by weight more accurate (especially with these little digital scales–so precise! so quick!) it is so much easier than shoving flour into measuring cups (five different scoops for this recipe!), hoping you don’t pack it harder or less hard than the person who wrote the recipe. Not everyone measures the same, too; most use the “fluff, scoop and level” technique, but I’ve also had cooking teachers that use a “fluff and delicated drop spoonfuls of flour in” method which leads to a lighter cup. American cups can range from 4.5 ounces to almost 7 ounces of flour in weight, depending on the way they were filled. It is not wonder that between this–and the fact that most people don’t have their ovens calibrated (I sure don’t!)–that people can have wildly different results when using the same recipe.
I do wish that more U.S. cookbook publishers would let the authors put in weight measurements as well. I cannot imagine that someone like Huntsman–the person who wrote the Sky High book featured here–doesn’t herself prefer using weights in the kitchen.
What a fun cake! Just looking at it makes me smile.
Hmmmm…. My God… Wonderfull!!! :)
anyone have any good ideas to make this cake when you have (people like me) who are allergic to strawberries…sad. I know.
hello…verygood.
Hi Deb!!
Thanks for the great response to Samphire. Following that thread (and maybe a really dumb question): I looked at your “cooking tools” page. If I want to begin measuring my flours out rather than using untrustworthy scoops: do I use the volume equivalents you’ve listed? Is 1 Cup of Flour 8 oz of flour; or is that only in the case of liquids?
Thanks so much!! I love your site- LOVE IT- always recommending it to friends. Sometimes I think we might have the exact same taste buds. Seriously. I think there was a brussel sprout post that actually made me yell: “Get out of my mouth!” at the screen. But you know, don’t get out. :) Just keep doing what you do- you have such a gift!
@Kelly S. – raspberries? cherry jam? use the strawberry jell-o, which I doubt has any relationship whatsoever with actual strawberries.
Hi redengine — No, that would just be liquids. I know, Americans have to make everything so confusing. A cup of white flour is usually about 4.5 ounces, but other flours vary in weight. Believe me, I think this system is as whack as you do!
Kelly — I don’t see why it would work with another pureed fruit, either tropical or berry. Of course, the caveat is that I haven’t tried it with that, but again, I don’t see why in theory it couldn’t work just as deliciously.
I’ve noticed lately that more and more recipes from professional kitchens are giving the flour measuring technique that was used in the test kitchen, in the recipe. Current recipes are also designating where to place the oven racks for baking as well.
My GE electric oven has an adjustable temperature knob. Many ovens have this feature. If you pull the temp knob off the oven, on the underside of the knob, there is a little notched thingy that can be reset so that when you set the temp for baking, it will be accurate. You have to use an oven thermometer to get an accurate heat reading, compare it to where you set the temp knob, then reset the notch in the proper position so that the temp knob, when placed back on the oven, reads the same as your oven thermometer. Check your oven manual or online for instructions, if you can’t figure out how to use the adjusting feature. Or go to any appliance store, and get the sales guy to show you.
sweet! I LOVE strawberry cake, but I’ve only had the mix variety and not tried to make my own, mostly because my mother and sister both say all the strawberry cake recipes suck. Now that can’t be true, because why else would strawberry cake exist in the first place (someone had to make it first to be a cake mix, after all!) so maybe I will try this version. Also, just for clarification’s sake, were the frozen strawberries thawed before they were pureed? I didn’t see any mention of thawing in the recipe so I am guessing “not” here.
I am in awe, Deb. On the extremely rare occasions I bake, it’s usually some kind of loaf thing, and icing [if I bother] is something you drizzle over the cake—most likely lemon juice and powdered sugar. This is architectural and stunning.
Hi Jill — So, the strawberries are supposed to be thawed. In baking cakes, the best results always come from room-temperature ingredients. But I am a renegade, no wait, I mean that I was totally rushed when I was making this and had the strawberries in the food processors just minutes after returning from the store. Thus, my pink batter not only looked like ice cream, it had the temperature of it. [Hangs cake-baker head in shame.] Fortunately, it still worked (albeit with some extra baking time). But do as I say, not as I do! Defrosted berries are best.
Why does it have to be for a girl? My son loves strawberry cake, and asks for it almost every year. But what to do if you’re trying to get rid of artificial colors from your diet, and every recipe you see has jello in it? In short, thanks for the recipe! I will file it away for next year. I might play with it to give it a stronger strawberry flavor, or at least put strawberry filling between the layers. It looks wonderful!
I am going to have to make this for my mother-in-law’s B’day next month AND order that book! I am a cake freak and always trying new recipes. Thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!!!
Okay, I had just sworn off Amazon due to excessive kitchenware purchases, and then I had to go and visit your site today. I’m powerless before your photos, and now the book is on its way. Hope you get some kind of commission from the sale. :)
The “pretty pretty princess” references, I hope everyone knows, are quite tongue-in-cheek. That said, I probably know more boys than girls who would enjoy this cake, though that is really neither here nor there…
what fun! this would make me very happy on my birthday
Wow, this cake looks amazing and delicious and suddenly my tastebuds are screaming “sugar, I need sugar”! So, I will be making cake today! Thanks for the recipes( all of them) and the gorgeous pictures.
Wow! This was good. I especially liked the cream cheese frosting. I could have ate a whole bowl of it.
really, people would make a cake with a box mix and jell-o? just the thought of it, gross!
I will have to give this a try for the next princess i know.
THANK YOU! Finally. I have been hunting for a strawberry cake for ages. I have only found two options. 1) Cake mix and Jello-O. Um. Okay. But no thanks. I mean, why wouldn’t I just buy strawberry cake mix? Same thing, right? 2) White cake with strawberry jam between the layers. Well, that’s not right either.
It’s settled. I HAVE to buy this cake book. It’s worth it for the chocolate peanut butter cake and this cake alone. I think I’ll try some pureed strawberries in the frosting for a little extra pink strawberry goodness kick. Mmm…
Oh Hallelujah! I only wish that you’d posted this two weeks ago. My son insisted on a strawberry cake for his birthday (I do ALLLL from scratch), and I’d never heard of them before. I searched and searched until I finally gave up and bought some white cake mix (my first ever) and Jell-O and fresh strawberries and a lemon. Yes, I still doctored it. I HATED making a white cake but I had only one shot and time slot to make it and couldn’t risk the ratio of liquids and solids and burning, etc. I have been told this is the new standard birthday cake for just about everyone in my family now, so I’ll be holding on to this one (thanks Debbie for passing me this link!). I will say, also hugely yummy with a baked fudge frosting. Think chocolate covered strawberries!
I love that book, too – have been making cakes from it for everyone’s birthdays. :)
That cake is so pretty I’m saving it for my sister’s birthday, next year.
LOVE the gathering of pumpkin and soup recipes together. Brilliant! A great gift to your readers. (P.S. can’t say enough about how great that pumpkin bread pudding is. Easy and delicious.)
You talked me into buying the book. I saw this post last night and bought it on ebay. Birthday present for myself!
Dumb question – Is it 1 1/2 caup of berries, pureed? Or 1 1/2 cups of puree? I want to try this with either cherries or rasberries. Looks amazing
Oh – I cannot wait to make this for my daughter’s birthday – she is a pink princess. Love your site!
Not only super yummy lookin’ but BEAUTIFUL!!
Oh my! So pretty! I think this will be making an appearance at my Christmas party this year. I’m thinking some red and green sprinkles would be quite festive on this. In reference to the parchment/newspaper issue… does anyone but me use wax paper? Mom learned to use that from an old baker friend of her parents and I’ve always used it in my own cake baking with great results.
This cake is absolutely adorable!! Such a feminine little cake. :)
They’re in the oven right now — my 3yo daughter & I were perusing birthday cakes online and when she saw this one she said, “We need to buy dat one. I want dat.” Princess party at 1!
Who knew there was a cake out there that shared my namesake? As a representative of the Boston Chapter of Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails, I recommend digging into that cake with one of these:
Pink Lady
1-1/2 oz gin
1/2 oz applejack
1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz grenadine (homemade)
1 egg white
Combine ingredients in a shaker and shake vigorously without ice.
Add ice; shake continue vigorous shaking.
Strain into your favorite vintage cocktail glass.
Grenadine
Combine equal parts pomegranate juice (Pom, par example) and sugar in a saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer for 7 minutes. Remove from heat and add 1 tsp orange flower water for every 1/2 cup pomegranate juice used. Cool.
Cin-cin!
Thanks for a fabulous cake recipe! Made it yesterday for mom’s birthday. Took it down to two layers and used the rest for cupcakes! I’ve been passing them around town as I run my errands today. My hair stylist loved em! Cupcakes make great random acts of kindness gifts! :-P
I must say, Deb is not only an immensely talented woman, but an incredibly generous friend! Thank you Deb for making my birthday so special! Please make this cake for anyone who loves amazing cake, and who is totally girly of course. xo EB.
I’m glad to hear your thoughts on the messed up measuring habits of this here country. And this could be a stupid question (I just memorized in math class and didn’t really learn), but is there an easy way to determine what the weight should be of a particular dry ingredient? So many recipes don’t list that. You said that a cup of flour weighs about 4.5 ounces, but what about other things? Is there any easy way to calculate that, or are we just at the mercy of recipe writers who don’t like scales? Bummer. And the cake looks divine. I might make it for my own birthday this year. Wow, that sounds extremely depressing.
This. cake. looks. amazing.
I can’t tell if I like the pretty pink or the tall layers or the gorgeous frosting most, but WOW all around.
I love this recipe but do agree on a few drops of colour … perhaps Wilton’s rose pink. Thank you
i think i love you.
i always thought that i might.. but now i’m almost certain..
pink lady cake..
o.m.g.
This cake is absolutely fabulous. I love it! :)
this is perfect timing. it is pink ribbon day tomorrow in Australia, and everyone is supposed to wear/eat/do pink things to raise money for breast cancer awareness/research. this cake looks like a beautiful and delicious way of doing so…if only it wasn’t 12.40 on the day of!
It looks absolutely delicious. I am so afraid of baking!
This cake looks absolutely scrumptious! I’m looking forward to making it :)
Strawberry cake was my favorite when I was little. I’ll have to check my recipe and see if it’s like this. If not, I’ll try this sometime soon. Mmmm!
I made this cake today and had enough cake batter left over for 2 jumbo cupcakes. It was a bit sweeter than I was expecting. I then took the sweetness over the top when I filled it with strawberry preserves and used a swiss buttercream to frost it (I don’t much like cream cheese).
My coworkers are going to fall over when they see it tomorrow.
My daughter requested a strawberry cake for her birthday and I found the same Jello recipes. Whole Foods had posted a recipe which I used but was disappointed in. One tip I did use though was to substitute some of the strawberries with strawberry jam. It definitely had a strawberry-E flavor. I am going to try this one this year for sure!
Hey Deb-
I’m a huge fan of smitten kitchen, but had to share that this cake didn’t work for me. I was a bit concerned about mixing the puree into the dry ingredients, and perhaps I did something wrong because the mixture got so thick it almost burned the motor out of my kitchenaid! I found the cake to be dense, and dry- kind of a like a scone? Thank you so much for sharing, and I’ll hit the archives to try another.
Many thanks-
Fabulous looking! Must try…
I was planning on making this lovely cake tomorrow but something is bothering me.. is it 1 1/2 cups of strawberries which are pureed or 1 1/2 cups of strawberry puree? Sorry if its a dumb question.
thank you.
It is 1.5 cups of frozen strawberry puree. About half a one-pound bag of strawberries which you can whirl in the blender or food processor.
this cake looks like heaven! i’m wondering if i can do a “blue gentleman” for my husband’s birthday with blueberries? hmm…
Hey Deb,
I am a huge fan of your site, but a first-time comment-poster. I just made this cake and had the exact same experience as Kristen (comment #96). I don’t know if they’re dry, but I did nearly burn out the motor of not one, but two handblenders! Any ideas what we might have done wrong? This cake sounds so wonderful, and I’m making it for my Aunt’s 60th Birthday on Saturday. I would even be willing to try again tomorrow, if you have any ideas what I did differently from you… Thanks!
Hi Kristen and cacaye — My batter, before I added the egg/milk mixture was crazy thick, too, almost like chocolate chip cookie dough thickness. As I added the liquids, it became more of a batter. It certainly didn’t burn out my KitchenAid motor (!) but it was thick. Is that what you experienced?
Hi again,
Yes, that was my experience. I was concerned that I overmixed the batter once the egg whites/milk were in, though … I was trying to compensate for not doing a good job mixing before I added them.
The cakes are now cooled and I think they will turn out! Thanks for your help!
Oh my God, you are a LIFESAVER. My daughter is turning 3 this weekend and has informed me that she wants a pink strawberry cake and the only thing I could find was the one with the Jell-o and box mix. Thank you thank you thank you. What timing!
wow! lovely cake, faschionable, so white and irresistable.. i have to translate cups in grams and then.. start it! waiting to taste it.. have a nice day!
I really loved this cake! I did a double-take on the part of the recipe that said to blend the puree into the flour, so I just did it the other way around — I whipped the butter and strawberries together, THEN added the dry ingredients, and it worked perfectly. I didn’t have round cake pans, so I just halved the recipe and made it into one sheet cake. It turned out moist and fluffy and so deliciously pink, and some strawberry cream cheese frosting (with the leftover puree) made a perfect first birthday dessert for my daughter!
I had the same experience as Kristen & Cacaye–the batter was so thick it practically burned out the kitchenaid mixer. When the baking time was up, it was nowhere near ready (the toothpick I inserted was far from clean) so I gave it another few minutes. After cooling, it is soooo dense and too chewy. Tastes more like a scone.
Huummm!!! wow yum…triple layer cake just my lucky …so beautifully decorated.
Just found ‘Sky High’ in perfect condition at Half Price Books for $15! Who could be crazy enough to sell this book? It’s gorgeous.
Thanks for the recommendation. I can’t wait to gluten free/veganize it:)
I like that you are willing to just slather on the frosting and up the recipe for it! Cake and frosting are a must.
#96, 101 and 107 – I did blow up my hand mixer. I talked to the cake lady at my work and she agreed with Bethany #106. I will try it again, once I buy a new mixer, with these adjusted instructions.
Thanks!
if you want a naturally brighter pink color, try frozen raspberries instead of frozen strawberries. i just made this cake yesterday and it was AMAZING! my only disappointment was that, upon opening the bag of frozen strawberries, i saw their color was in the pale pink/grey family, which i had forgotten is standard for frozen strawberries. frozen raspberries, which i am much more familiar with, are always stunningly ruby red plus, in my opinion, retain more of their fresh berry taste. so i havent tried the cake with raspberries yet, but this is my hunch and also the way i will bake the cake next time around.
I made an 8″ triple layer cake for a dinner party and had enough left over batter to make the most adorable 3″ triple layer cake for another party. I cooked up the leftover berries with some lemon juice, sugar and cornstarch and put it on top. I could not physically add the butter to the flour/sugar mixture, all my insticts went against it. Instead I creamed the butter and added the dry mixture and strawberry puree in batches. My mixer is fine and happy and the cakes came out beautifully.
I did some crazy kitchen math to make this cake even bigger for a baby shower for 40. I wanted to make this in 12″ layers, so I got out three 9″ pans, filled them each about half full of water and measured that volume, then figured if I 3/4′ed the entire recipe, I’d get enough for one 12″ cake round. And it worked (after having to bake each round for over an hour and later trimming off all the brown bits)! I did 2 – 12″ rounds sliced in half for 4 layers.
I too would add more food coloring for even more pinkness. I really had to double and triple check the way the ingredients were added to the batter and I think next time I try this cake (delish, by the way), I’m gonna whip the egg whites before adding. Just think this could use a bit more air and lightness.
reminds me of when i was little
oh… were you not meant to whip the egg whites? i assumed you were but that the direction had been mistakenly left out. maybe THAT’S why it was so light and fluffy?
I made this for my daughter’s 10th birthday which, this year, is on Thanksgiving! It was the highlight of the Thanksgiving Dinner! Believe it or not, it needed more frosting (to do the decoration), so I made 1/3 of the original recipe to do the decoration (with a bit leftover). I have just made it for the second time in two days because she wanted it for her sleepover party tomorrow night. We made it into cupcakes (it makes 36), and I think the girls will love it.
I’ve made this twice now, and both times it was a hit. The first time, I made cupcakes with it for a baby shower. Oh so good! I made the cake again this weekend for Christmas party. I dropped about 3/4 cup of the sugar, since I found it a bit sweet – I think the fresh strawberries I used were sweet enough to compensate. I used the cream cheese frosting between the layers but made a light, fluffy frosting from one of my mom’s old recipes for the outside. It was a nice contrast to the richness of the cake and cream cheese filling and I think it really worked well. I had no problems with the batter being too thick, but then again, my brother bought me the honkin’ big Kitchenaid Pro last Christmas and I haven’t yet met anything it couldn’t handle (though it did choke a little on the pasta dough I made last week).
I just made this last weekend and it was a hit! My suggestion, is to strain the pureed strawberries before mixing into the butter – that way there wont be any seeds i the batter. Also instead of the cream cheese frosting I made 7-minute frosting and I think it complemented the cake very well!
Does this recipe double, or triple well? I would love to make this for my daughter’s request of a pink princess cake for her third birthday but I am making a tier cake with a base of a 14×2 inch round cake .
There is no reason not to scale the recipe to whatever size you want to make it. However, a common concern from home cooks when doing so is that their bowls/mixers aren’t big enough to handle the extra batter. If space is a limitation for you, you might want to make the batter in batches. Good luck.
I made this pink beauty today in 3 – 8″ round pans with no problem. It has great strawberry flavor and is a lovely pink. I debated but decided to add one drop of the red coloring, I don’t know if it did much to deepen the color. I like it a lighter pink. I drained the juices from the strawberrys before I pureed them and used it in the frosting. I also added 4oz of mascarpone cheese to my buttercream. It is delicious and also a lovely pastel pink. What a pretty cake..and so tasty too. My batter was also cookie dough thick before adding the milk and puree, but my good old KA plowed right through it, no sweat. Thanks for this, Deb.
Hi Deb – I’m making this pinkalicous cake for my upcoming 4 year old daughter’s birthday next week – can’t wait! I think I may substitute rasb for strawberries for color – but we’ll see. Because it is for a bunch of young kids, I’m tempted to switch out the heavier cream cheese frosting for a lighter one -maybe something closer to a whipped cream frosting or the swiss buttercream one — what do you think? I’m also making a few of your yummy party appetizers for the parents (Flat Bread, Feta Salad & the White Bean dip) so it will be a SmittenKitchen party!
I just made this cake in a three tier barbie version for my daughter’s 3rd birthday party. it was a hit. by far the most delicious birthday cake i’ve had. i took the idea of putting some strawberry puree in the cream cheese frosting and it added just the right touch. i also covered the cake in marshmallow fondant icing. that was so easy (HA HA). it was my first time, but persistence paid off and the end result was amazing. thank you so much for this recipe, i have been using your site for 6 months now and it is truly inspiring.
I am planning on finally making this cake this weekend (after returning a countless number of times to this particular page to see the pictures one more time) and I have a small question. Since the recipe calls for the cakes to be baked in three pans, do you rotate the pans in your oven during the baking? I know that this is what you are supposed to do for multiple cookie sheets. I’ve never baked a layer cake before so I am a little bit nervous.
It is always a good idea to rotate pans, as most ovens bake unevenly — back to front and switching racks halfway through.
I am going to make this for my sweet Valentine’s (hubby & daughters) Can’t wait to try it. I have had a similar version. My friend made one for my birthday with coconut and nuts added to the batter.
Oh, y’all, do not use newspaper as a substitute for parchment! The ink has all kinds of nasty chemicals in it. And I am no crunchy granola girl.
How many people will this cake feed? I’m tempted to make it for my friend’s birthday party tonight, but we will only be seven people and from the amounts of butter, flour and cheese in the recipe I imagine this cake to be… enormous?
I’m having trouble finding cake flour at my usual stores, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and my local farmer’s market. Do you have a recommended substitution?
You can make your own cake flour by swapping each cup of it with 3/4 cup all-purpose flour + 2 tablespoons cornstarch, sifted together.
Btw, cake flour is easier to find in a generic grocery store. In NYC, I use Gristedes or whatever is nearby. I find that the nicer and specialty stores are less likely to carry it.
Hello Deb. I want to make this cake for my friend’s birthday, but I’m not sure about the egg white part. In some white cake recipes, you have to beat the egg whites til its thick and foamy. Do you do this for this recipe?
It is not neccessary in this cake.
I made this cake this weekend with raspberries instead of strawberries, because frozen raspberries were what I had. The raspberries gave it the most beautiful pale purple color, and the cake tasted heavenly. It’s the first triple-layer cake I’ve ever made, too. Your site is great. Any suggestions for recipes that will use up the eight egg yolks now languishing in my fridge?
Yay! What a wonderful cake! I made this for Easter yesterday and it was a hit. I did what Bethany in 106 suggested, beat butter and puree then add dry ingredients. I also added one tsp of almond extract to the frosting and layered sliced almonds on the outside. I added fresh strawberry slices between the layers which helped add more strawberry flavor to the whole cake. It was delicious!
cake flour= wad kind? Self raising or..??
1 1/2 cups pureed frozen strawberries* you but a star(*) to it, means Must or not necessary?
Just cake flour. If self-rising was needed, I’d have indicated it. You can always make your own cake flour at home: For every cup of flour, add a 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of baking powder, whisk together very well and sift the mixture. Measure your self-rising flour from there.
The asterik goes to a note at the bottom of the recipe, explaining why frozen were indicated.
How long do you think this cake, in cupcake form, will last? I have been tasked to make pink cupcakes for a very special birthday party- the guest of honor is turning 2! She likes all things pink and sweet- so this is the perfect cake. Unfortunately, the party is going to be on a Monday, and I can only get cupcakes to her mother on Friday. Will the three days totally ruin the cupcakes? I was considering baking them, wrapping well, and delivering them with the icing in a separate container. But then again, that still amounts to some work for an overworked mom. So frosted cupcakes it is.
And what frosting do you think would last the longest on these cupcakes? Mom suggested cream cheese frosting, but I was thinking that 7-minute frosting, tinted pink would just be over-the-top cute. Will the 7-min icing last well?
You should check out my cake tips in this post. I don’t like to make cakes in advance unless I am going to freeze them — even the most moist ones begin to dry out quickly. You can make the cupcakes weeks in advance, if you wrap them well in the freezer. Seven-minute frosting, in my opinion, is more of a last minute thing because it crusts. I wouldn’t do it more than 12 hours in advance.
Deb, everything turned out perfectly and just the way you described it prior to baking the cake. For some reason, it’s taken over 1 hour and a half to cook the cake at 350 F and it is still not done. I’m not exactly sure what’s wrong with it. Any ideas why it’s taking so long? :/
Sounds like an oven issue! No reason the cake (at the thickness I showed) wouldn’t be baked in way less.
Hey Deb, I upped the oven at 375-400F and baked it for 30 minutes and turned out perfectly. :) I think my oven is just slightly cooler than others. But, phew, thank goodness it baked. It’s my birthday today and yes, I’m making my own cake. I figured I’d rather have a cake that I slaved over than get a cake I don’t want to take home and have secret rendezvous with in the kitchen. :P
Thanks!
I love this recipe and plan on using it for a breast cancer fundraiser in July for 100 cupcakes! However I am a little nervous about burning them. Any advice on how long you would bake this recipe in cupcake form? I am notorious for cooking cakes to perfection and burning the heck out of cupcakes. Jessica
Wow! I have a cake-of-the month calendar, and get together with a friend to make each cake. April’s cake was a strawberry cake from a box! We decided to find a homemade strawberry cake, and I found this one at the last minute. What a great decision! I used all purpose flour because this poor college student can’t afford cake flour. I simply reduced the flour to 4 cups and ended up with a dense, moist, biscuit-y cake-delicious! I just made the cake again for my sister’s birthday. I put it in a 9×13 pan (had plenty of leftover batter for cupcakes). I made a few alterations to the recipe this time, eliminating the lemon, adding a bit of vanilla, and beating 4 of the egg whites until stiff. I folded these beaten egg whites into the batter at the very end. I also added nearly 10 drops of red food coloring. I ended up with a light, fluffy, moist, lightly pink cake with a subtle strawberry flavor. Perfect! Thanks Deb!
I made this cake for our Memorial Day BBQ this weekend (the coloring was appropriate because it was also our friends’ one year wedding anniversary, and hot pink was their wedding color) and it was fantastic! Next time I think I want to try adding even more strawberry puree, as the flavor was there but not super-pronounced. Or maybe using the puree as a jam-like layer between cakes. But the cake was moist and delicious and everyone loved it. Thanks!!
I’m making this right now. They’re puffing up a bit. Did you have to trim them to get them to lie flat. I’m hoping they’ll deflate as they cool.
You are right about the batter. Absolutely fantastic. I got batter on my nose like a kid licking the beater!
My plan is to freeze them today and frost tomorrow using one to cut up and look like a butterfly like this http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes.aspx/butterfly-cake and then saving the other two to frost as a standard cake. I didn’t feel up to a multiple layer butterfly!
I level cakes when necessary, definitely a good idea or the layers on top will crack if resting on a curve. You might want to check out some of my other layer cake tips in this post.
I just made this cake yesterday for my 3yr old daughter’s birthday. It turned out WONDERFUL. Everyone raved. Thanks for the great recipe. I’m holding on to this one. I want to share with your readers, however, that lightening traditional cream cheese frosting with whipped cream and marscapone makes it even better. I find regular cream cheese frosting too goopey and cheesy…but if you whip up about a cup of heavy cream (in a separate bowl, with a little sugar and vanilla of course) and gently fold it into the cream cheese mixture along with one 8-oz tub of marscapone cheese, you will get a lighter, fluffier, fabulous frosting. I got the idea from The Joy of Baking (http://www.joyofbaking.com/RedVelvetCake.html) – this recipe makes a great red velvet, by the way.
Quick Question:
I just bought THE book, and I noticed Sky High’s version of this cake uses a White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting. Any particular reason you didn’t go with that, I mean other than personal preference of course? I’ll soon be trying my hand at this recipe, and wondered which way I should go.
Thank you!
I’ll be making this cake for my best friend’s sweet sixteen! =]
hi
do you defrost the strawberries even before pureeing, or just defrost the puree?
and do the egg whites need to be at room temperature?
the cake looks nice – i like the way you decorated it! I just made your peanut butter chocolate cake with great success -wow that cake is rich. will leave a comment on that post too. thanks for the great recipes
They can be pureed still frozen. That said, most bakers will tell you that everything should always be at room temperature when you bake, eggs included. I didn’t bother. I never do.
I have been testing strawberry cka recipes for my sisters’ wedding cake with no success!!
My recipe looks similiar to yours (an offshot of martha stewart’s yellow butter cake).
For some reason, it is just not rising properly.
The only thing I can think of is that I am using egg yolks in mine (which doesn’t seem like it would be an issue) or that I skimped on the sugar and that it why is it not turning out. I am loosing my mind (and confidence).
Any suggestions?
I made this cake for my birthday. Since strawberries are in season and are quite delicious here in California, I knew I had to use as many strawberries as I could. Instead of cream cheese frosting in the layers, I spread sliced strawberries! I sliced 2 pints of strawberries, threw them in a bowl with a few T of lemon juice and a 1/3 cup of sugar, let it marinate for a few hours, drained the berries and put them between the layers. They were the perfect consistency. I then iced the cake with the cream cheese frosting (I made a tiny batch of swiss buttercream from the wedding cake entries, but it was too buttery for me, especially since the cake was so buttery. I don’t like American buttercream, and had hoped the Swiss one would be better, but alas it was not the case. I did save it and tint it pink for decoration, tho). It was delicious. There’s a pic on my blog: lazycrafter.com
My mom made this cake for my birthday. I have to say it was soooo good. We ate it with a little lemon sorbet on the side. I wish there was more…
Just made this for my son’s second birthday. “Cake” is one of those words, apparently, that he can learn after hearing (and tasting) once! This was a hit–thanks!
Just baked the cake with Farmer’s Market bought strawberries from today. It is out of control awesome! I’m going to add a layer of chocolate ganache to the cake just to make it over the top. That’s how I roll… thanks for the recipe!
I’m new to layer cakes but I really want to try this cake. I was wondering, would using 8″ round cake pans instead of 9″ make a huge difference? Also, if I separated the batter into 2 pans instead of 3, would that work? Thanks!
I am sure 8-inch round will be fine. Haven’t done it in two layers instead of three, but I’d be wary of the bigger height if you’re only using 2-inch side pans and pans with a smaller circumference.
gained 5 pounds just looking at the photos
This cake looks fabulous :)
And I agree about needing tons of creamy sweet frosting to make someone feel like a princess.. However.. while I have an abundance of strawberries.. not so much w/ cream cheese. Do you think this cake would be just as awesome if I whipped up some of your strawberry coulis and used that between the layers instead of making twice as much frosting?
It might work, but the coulis is definitely on the thin side, and might absorb more than sit on top. You could set it with a little gelatin or trying to cook a little cornstarch into it to thicken it. Or use a strained strawberry jam.
I made this for my niece’s birthday last week and it was fabulous. Everyone raved.
Mine was particularly spectacular because I only have two 9″ round cake pans – so I was forced to use my 8″ rounds, of which I have three. It took a bit longer to bake and boy-howdy was that a tall cake. Leveling was called for, but I didn’t, so the frosting was a bit thick on the sides…
We decided it tasted like a strawberry shortcake.
I made this for my Mom’s 50th birthday party last night. It’s especially special because she has breast cancer and we wanted something pretty & pink! It was delicious- I just wish I had put more frosting in between the layers. Thanks!
Deb – any idea how long to bake these as cupcakes?
I have not made these as cupcakes but most cupcakes bake for about 20 minutes. You should start checking at least 5 minutes before then.
Would your recommend Sky High or Rose B’s Cake Bible for a cake recipe book?
I like to make pretty cakes but they must be delicious as well. A few difficult recipes would be fine, but I don’t want the entire book to be difficult.
Hi Beth — I use Sky High a lot more, but it might just be more to my taste. I’d peek at both of them in a bookstore, see which one makes you want to run home and bake immediately more.
Would it be okay if I omitted the strawberry in the cake batter, and used it as a white cake instead? Maybe adding a vanilla bean…I am topping it with chocolate covered strawberries but my friend is not a fan of pink (what kind of friend is that?!). I’m using a whipped what-your-mom-says-is-buttercream-but-really-isn’t-but-still-tastes-fabulous kinda frosting.
Beautiful! I can almost taste it, thank you for sharing!
I would recommend using an actual white cake recipe, and not taking out a key ingredient. You might Google around for Dorie Greenspan’s Perfect Party Cake for a solid white cake recipe, or use one of the yellow ones on this site.
Hey Deb –
Love your stuff – and am going to make this cake for my daughter’s 6th bday. Wondering if you have a good recipe for whipped cream frosting? How do you think this would work with whipped cream frosting and actual strawberries between the layers? Also, can I make the cakes on Friday night and freeze them to frost on Saturday morning? Thanks!
Whipped cream frostings are generally not stable enough for overnight or longer storage, and certainly not for freezing. You can try to add a stabilizer however. I don’t usually use a recipe — I just make a lot of whipped cream, maybe one and half times this amount.
Hey Deb, re post 171: I decided to make it with the strawberries anyways, and the cake was probably the tastiest cake I have ever made. In true Deb fashion, I couldn’t leave my moms frosting recipe well enough alone, and I actually made it even better (!)! Thanks for all the tips, and I hope you’re doing something to cool off in all this heat!
Hi Deb –
I was just thinking about freezing the cakes overnight – not frosted. I was hoping to make the cake Friday night and then frost it with whipped cream frosting in the morning…so that it’s fresh for the party. Thanks! Lyla
Hi Deb! I am a new reader to this site, and happened to stumble across this recipe on my lunch break – I am so excited! Iam hosting my sister’s baby shower soon, and all she has requested is a strawberry cake (I have no idea why…mom did not make one growing up or anything!) I just want to ask, will this cake work well in different-shaped pans? I am making a 2 layer cake, the first is a large rectangle, the second a ladybug shaped cake (like a ladybug in the grass…can you tell the baby is a girl?!) Thanks…I am sort of new to baking…and nervous about making a cake for 40 people!!
oh, i should note, i was planning on making a double batch..
I made this cake for my husband’s birthday this week. It was a huge hit! Great recipe. Thanks so much Smitten Kitchen. I did swap in a strawberry buttercream frosting for the cream cheese frosting at his request. Very delish!
Is it possible to substitute the milk required with half and half? I have some left over from another recipe and would like to use it up.
Thanks!
hi! i just made this for my daughter’s 6th birthday. with part of the batter i made mini cupcakes which were delicious. with the rest i made a two-layer cake using 9″ round pans. at 30 mins i checked the cakes. they had risen nicely and were getting brown around the edges and the cake tester came out clean. however, after cooling in the pans, the cakes flopped. not sure what i did wrong. any ideas? thank you. it was so yummy, everyone ate it anyway, but i felt terrible that it didn’t come out right.
I would like to try this recipe in mini bundt pans- is there a different frosting that you could recommend? I just made the lemon cake in mini bundt form (which were amazing), and am now obsessed with little bundt cakes.
Just made this with blackberries instead of strawberries and it was a big hit with my guests – and very purple! I found the cream cheese frosting a little runny – not firm enough to pipe. Might be a problem with me translating quantities into grams though.
Oh, and I used an extra four egg whites for the cake since I had them on hand, and they definitely didn’t flop!
Yummo! We just made this cake. A 10 oz bag of strawberries was perfect with a little amaretto to help those frozen berries blend. The frosting was made with cream cheese, marscapone, and a little lemon juice and zest. It really played off well with the fresh strawberries we served with the cake.
thanks a bunch for this recipe. Made this for my daughters birthday and it rurned out so yummy and congragulations on the birth of baby Jacob. He is such a cutie pie
Hi, did anyone try these celebration cakes without egg? Perhaps, by using No Egg or other sustitutes as a replacement? Does that matter a lot? I plan to make this cake soon for a b’day and have some vegan guests including one who is allergic to egg. Any suggestion would be appreciated.
I don’t think I’ve made a cake since I was a kid, with my mom. I’m a pie girl. So when I was asked to make the birthday cake for a relative, I decided on this one because I like the idea of the CAKE tasting like strawberries. (I went with a simple swiss buttercream frosting instead, and added fresh strawberries in the layers and on top.)
I followed the cake recipe to the T, but I found the cake to be just a bit too dense and thick. It was definitely moist though. I would have preferred the cake to be about 20% lighter and fluffier. What could I do next time make it that way? I’m not a baker…could I whisk the egg mixture rather than simply blending it? Also, I found that when I added the two mixtures, the resulting batter seemed to have a slight curdle to it. Not chunky, just if I looked closely it had that curdled effect.
I really loved the flavor of the cake and would make it again, once I figure out how to make it lighter. :)
This recipe was obviously meant for my soon to be three princess. With 3 older brothers, she is as girly as they come and has demanded a pink cake and pink presents. :-) She is not concerned with what is in the presents, so long as they are pink! This is the first year she is letting us know what she wants & it is so fun to be able to do it for her! Thanks so much! Your site is always my go-to site ~ I always know I can trust anything here!!
I’ve made this 3 times now and am about to head out to pick up strawberries for a 4th (baby shower tomorrow afternoon). I LOVE this cake. Thanks for sharing the recipe! Your blog has yet to lead me astray.
So excited – I am hosting a baby shower on Saturday and the mama has requested a strawberry cake. I’ll let you know how it goes!
anyone out there, just wondering, what can i do with the 8 egg yolks? any clever ideas on how to use them on another recipe? I don’t want to be wasteful…
Ice cream!
Thanks so much for posting this. I made this cake forever-and-a-day ago, but with fresh raspberries. It was delicious and addicting. I’ve made this cake with raspberries a thousand times over and my family never gets tired of it. <3
My first “home made” cake! I made this last night! Thank you Deb! Your pictures were especially useful when I had to figure out the consistency of the batter (ice cream-like indeed). When I was leveling the cake, I tasted it and it was so moist. I followed all of your layer cake tips and the frosting turned out nicely. It is for my friend’s daughters’ 1st birthday today. Wish my cake carrier some luck. =)
Loved this recipe! I made cupcakes (pink little heavens) for the little girls but the big girls loved them more I think… Your recipes are outstanding and have heard nothing but rave reviews each time I make something. Thanks!
My sister sent me this link last year for my daughter’s birthday. I ran out of time and instead ended up making a cake that had jello in it. Gaaaak. She didn’t mind, she was 4, but this year as she has asked for another Strawberry cake, I’m going with this one. Can’t wait!
I just found your recipe, but had already tried the Sprinkles Strawberry Cupcake recipe off Martha’s website last summer. They are quite similar. From prior baking experience, I measure out the milk, butter, and eggs the night before to warm up. I soften the butter and warm the milk if that doesn’t happen. That produces a much fluffier cake, for those who had problems with dense and dry. Due to it being a “cupcake” recipe, they also suggested not to overmix the batter, to avoid tough little cakes. Your recipe uses all egg whites, which makes for a softer crumb (per Cake Bible), while Sprinkles called for 6 whites and 3 whole eggs. Sky High’s also has more baking powder, 1/2c. more puree, and cake flour vs ap flour. Yours wins! Can’t wait to try it with some of the other berries written about, also! Thanks so much:)
Very good recipe, thanks for sharing. I chose to frost my 3 layer 8in cake with the whipped cream cheese frosting. It’s great!
Just made this cake for my daughter’s 10th irthday — big hit with a houseful of very girly girls. My cake batter was also very thick and the cakes took a very long time to bake (as some other commenters mentioned). The end result was delicious but quite dense (as opposed to light). I did not thaw the berries though and mixed everything by hand… I suspect that had something to do with it! Anyway, thanks again for a great cake.
This cake is incredible! My brother-in-law made it this weekend and it was a smash hit. The strawberry flavor was subtle, but right on target. Thanks for sharing the recipe!
Okay, this cake is perfect but if you read this I need help! I found out the birthday gathering has gone from 5 to 15+ so I really will need to make a sheet cake. She wants a strawberry cake so I would still like to stick to the basic recipe. I am thinking it should work, I just need to figure out how high up the batter should reach in the pan I’m thinking… If I fill it half way and have batter left over should I stop, 1/3, 2/3? Any help figuring this out will be greatly appreciated! I read my How to Cook Everything book, googled, and still can find nothing that will tell me this. Thanks!
I have an interesting question. Say you don’t like… fruity cakes. If I were to omit the berries, would the cake end up tasting like flour? I’ve tried so many cake recipes, and I want to make the perfect white cake. Not yellow cake, not really angel food cake, but a plain, somewhat simple white cake. And I came across this, and thought maybe this was the one.
Hey Deb, made this cake for my 4 yr old niece’s family birthday today – great cake. I whizzed in a few rasps with my strawbs and got a lovely flavour, but I would probably decorate the cake with a lot more strawbs next time as it goes so well with the cake, and might even try slightly reducing the amount of milk and increasing the fruit to one cup (I halved the recipe and did it in 2 8″ pans, still needed almost 30 min to bake). I loved the pink colour! I also sieved the fruit which was a total PITA but worth it because I didn’t like the idea of seeds in the cake.
I did cream cheese frosting which came out way too soft to properly ice the cake, I just sort of spread it on and let it ooze down the sides a bit. THis always happens. Any idea how to rectify whilst keeping that lovely rich cream cheese flavour?
My first 3-layer cake. Delicious! Everyone loved it and it looked beautiful. Was a bit tough for a few moments with my stand mixer working harder than ever before, but once I added the wet ingredients mixing returned to normal. Thanks.
I made this for dessert yesterday (because, really, what’s more valentiney than a pink cake?), and it was absolutely delicious. Thanks for sharing.
Quick question – do you think, if I cut this recipe down to a third of its original size, it would bake properly in two 6-inch round pans? Thanks!
I made this for Valentine’s Day, so I wanted to make it more… pink. I mixed fresh, pureed strawberries and shredded coconut into the icing and it was fabulous! I also topped with sliced almonds for an added crunch. I took it to work the next day, and although I work in an office filled with dieters, it was gone by noon and received rave reviews!
question:
i wanted to make a guava chiffon cake for my sisters bday but saw this cake recipe and LOVE baked goods with real strawberries. can i half this recipe to make some cupcakes? i dont know so much about the chemistry of it all. let me know! thanks!! stella
There’s no reason you can’t make this as cupcakes (if you can through or do a word search in the comments, you’ll see that many people have). I haven’t worked with guava a whole lot, so I can’t be totally sure, but it seems you could also swap it for the strawberry to get the cake you want.
I made this cake into the shape of a teacup for a 2-year-old’s birthday party this weekend. It was a huge hit! After I download the photos, I’ll email you one :-) Very tasty, wonderful recipe!
Well I for one DID burn out the motor on my (hand) mixer, which I sort of saw coming but decided to ignore, even as the little guy pleaded for me to stop. Luckily they’re like 30 bucks I guess. (I wish we still had appliances like that repaired instead of just dropping them in the garbage)
I think had I defrosted the strawberries first, the butter wouldn’t have seized up so much, although it is crazy thick before you add the whites. I still baked the cake of course, although with some disparate globs of unmixed butter–so much the better, really. It tastes quite a bit like a muffin, which I love. Great recipe–next time I might cut back on the sugar a notch, especially if this wasn’t for a little kid. I used the chocolate fudge frosting on this site to ice it and also brushed the cakes with some amaretto. REAL GOOD THANKS
Just finished using this recipe for Pink Lady cupcakes. I halved the recipe and it made perfectly 2 dozen. I added a few drops of coconut extract and baked for 22 minutes – excellent. I used coconut icing with a few tsp of leftover strawberry puree for a slightly pink icing. LOVE this recipe. Thanks!
thank you so very much for this post. I too will buy this book. I have searched for years for the perfect strawberry cake recipe. and cringe at the thought of boxed cake and jell-o for that matter just buy the strawberry cake box….lol I am making this cake tonight it is for a princess castle cake and I will let you know what the princess says about the cake!!!
Great recipe…. I tried the cake today, except I didn’t have frozen strawberries so I used blueberries and it came out great. :)
I made this with raspberries and mascarpone cheese frosting for my daughter’s first birthday party.
Huge hit! This was probably the most delicious cake I’ve ever made, thanks for posting it.
I made this for my 3 yr. old’s birthday. It turned out wonderful! I don’t have the best luck with cakes, so that’s saying a lot. I really wanted a strawberry cake that didn’t use Jello, and this fit the bill. I live in high altitude and made the following modifications: 4 1/2 tsp. baking powder, 375 degrees, baked for 25 minutes. Thanks for a great recipe!
Holy Moly…you are right about the batter at one point tasting like strawberry ice cream (but totally better). I made this for a very special occasion, and everyone loved it.
http://bitemefoodblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/once-upon-time.html
Thanks yet again!
Hey Deb, I know you’re a busy lady, but do you think you could possibly give me the recipe for the swiss buttercream included in the book for this cake? I would like to make this cake with swiss buttercream, but I don’t want to end up with too little frosting. Thanks! Squeeze Jacob’s little cheeks for me. :)
PS: Elissajane, I’ve always had great results with this white cake. It’s wonderfully moist and tender.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Heavenly-White-Cake/Detail.aspx
I have a Swiss Buttercream recipe on this site.
I’m planning to make this in cupcake form for my daughter’s first birthday party. Could I make them a day ahead OR could I at least make the batter a day ahead and keep in the refrigerator? Thanks!
I made this cake today (for my husband! pink lady cake is for everybody!), and I frosted it with a simple strawberry buttercream (butter, powdered sugar, strawberries–no meringue) and it is awesome. Tastes like pure strawberries & cream. Why does nobody else seem to want strawberry frosting with their strawberry cake?
PS Had to bake it for a good 25 min over the outsided suggested time. Pretty sure I don’t have a cool oven, think it was just due to 8″ round pans rather than 9″. And it’s super tall. And I stood strawberries on top so it’s way taller than it is wide :-)
I halved the recipe and made it as cupcakes (it made 20). Fantastic. I added some amaretto to the strawberry puree. I also was terrified to put the flour in first (apparently I fear change) so I beat the butter and strawberries together before adding the dry ingredients (warning if you do it this way – turn the mixer on SLOWLY or beware of flying strawberry puree!).
I also added some melted white chocolate to the frosting. This cake is really great. It’s on the dense side rather than light and fluffy – but that’s not a bad thing. It’s definitely not muffiny or sconelike and has a great crumb. These will become a staple!
Made this tonight because my parents were coming over and I am on Spring break (as a teacher not a student) and I never have any other time bake fancy, wonderful things. We all loved it, as I knew we would because everything I try from your blog works as it should. I did add two drops of food coloring, but it was still barely pink, if I really wanted it pink it would need more. Also for those who have asked, fresh strawberries work as well as frozen.
I love the pics of your son in your blog, enjoy those sweet cheek days.
without a stand mixer, i’ve wrestled mightily with three-layer cakes, and this one was no exception (the head of my spatula disappeared while i was scraping the bowl). having cake flour on hand and hulled, frozen strawberries would have cut out a lot of the work, but when i tasted that rosy, spongy batter, i knew i had a winner. stacked with cream cheese frosting (less cream cheese, more vanilla extract), it was not only gorgeous, but deemed “the best cake i’ve ever eaten” by half the partygoers. jaws were dropped.
other notes – it seemed like an awful lot of sugar and butter, but then again, it’s a HUGE cake. if i had sweeter strawberries in season, i’d definitely cut down on the sugar. a few drops of food coloring didn’t make much of a difference, and i hate using fake dye, ick. next time i’d use beet juice, naturally.
Okay, I have made this cake three times, tweaking the process a little each round. I had the crazy-thick-batter-to-the-point-of-almost-blowing-out-my-hand-mixer issue the first time. And not really enough strawberries. I had to beat the hell out if it to get the butter and the puree to integrate and my cake turned out a little tough. For my second attempt, I combined the butter and puree before adding it to the flour. This was a little better, but the liquids were kind of lumpy, but it made adding the wet to dry way easier. This last time, I creamed the butter and sugar, added the puree and then combined. Best variation yet. The crumb was tender, but the weight was a bit heavier than I would have liked. I used a few drops of coloring and had really sweet strawberries, so next time I might reduce the sugar by a 1/4 C. If I make this again, I will keep the creaming method and maybe put in half of the milk. I was also thinking about whipping the egg whites a bit and folding them into the lightened batter. Whew. Turned out well, though, the birthday girl really loved it.
When I made this cake, it was perfect–moist and tender. Mixing the flour with the butter was kind of freaky; the flour started to stretch like bread dough. I use a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, and the batter didn’t tax it at all. However, I did thaw the frozen strawberries and also had to throw in a few fresh berries. It baked in a half hour. I filled it with lemon curd and iced it with Swiss buttercream. My whole family loved it, especially the little chunks of strawberries the food processor didn’t get, and the seeds gave it a natural touch.
Hi deb!
So I am planning on making this cake for my best friend’s birthday. (I saw this way back and thought OMG shes getting this cake! She’s a definitely a pretty pink princess kinda girl.) I want to use fresh strawberries since we’ve been getting a lot in recently (weird for April right?) and they were actually cheaper than the frozen ones. What I’m concerned about however is that they wont have enough juice to puree well… should I add water in that case? If I do wont the strawberry flavor be diluted? I know frozen berries once thawed release a lot of liquid and I’m not sure how to proceed. Any advice would be great!
Thanks!
Janet
I just made this recipe-in cupcake, mini cupcake, and mini bundt form. I used the suggested cream cheese frosting on the cupcakes but used a meyer lemon glaze on the mini bundts-both varieties were awesome, but I can trick myself into calling the bundts breakfast, since I was planning on eating some tomorrow morning anyway. Thanks Deb!
This looks incredible. Possibly dumb question: since its strawberry season, I want to use fresh ones. Do I need to add sugar to the puree? I’m assuming the frozen berries you used were natural, not sweetened, but wanted to check.
Not a dumb question. Honestly, I haven’t tried it with fresh because I made this cake very far from strawberry season and the original recipe calls for frozen. However, it looks like a handful of people have successfully (#224, #221), so you’re probably good to go. Do report back! It’s such a wonderful springy cake, it is made for fresh berries.
Do you think that I could add some pulverized freeze dried strawberries to get more strawberry kick and color? How much would you suggest?
Finally made this… it was great! The birthday girl LOVED it. Thanks!
A heaping pint of fresh strawberries netted out 1-1/2 c. puree.
I doubled the red dye, and they are still (beautifully) pale.
I made these as cupcakes and baked ~20-25 minutes.
This recipe would yield 36 cupcakes – I reduced the recipe 2/3 to make 24 cupcakes because I can only fit 2 trays in my oven and wasn’t sure how the waiting batter would react since this cake does not follow a method I recognize.
Very light but with a true and lovely strawberry taste.
Unfrosted they would make a delightful muffin for a shower brunch…mother’s day awaits!?!
I hope my little niece is as excited about these as I am, and now I am buying that cookbook, the source of her chocolate cupcakes as well (from here http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/08/chocolate-peanut-butter-cake/ )
Okay I just made this cake and it was delicious. However I recommend having a kitchen aide and not an off brand mixer. I only say this because this recipes batter overloaded my mixer and I would like it if other people could avoid the issue. This was totally worth it though because it is a positivly astounding cake. And do not even get me started on the frosting.
Thanks for yet another delish recipe.
Ok, this looks amazing! I’ve been trying to find a good cake recipe for my daughter’s 4th birthday party coming up. She wants Ariel (of course!) so I will have the Wilton cake pan and plan to put a layer of filling in the middle. Love the look of the cream cheese icing, but was wondering how it would work for decorating purposes? How stiff is it? Or am I better off with standard buttercream and using a layer of the cream cheese icing in the middle? Any advice GREATLY appreciated!
Your cake is so pretty! I made this cake for a birthday, and it was a hit. Nothing is more perfect than a fresh strawberry cake with cream cheese frosting. Here is the link to the one I made.
http://www.katom.com/blog/of-interest/2986/pink-lady-cake
Hey,
I have been searching and searching for the perfect cake for my daughters first b/day. This cake looks amazing and delicious. I was wondering what would be the best way to store it if I make it the day before? Also, I don’t want to add the food coloring (we try to avoid it) so could I add whole strawberries on top with slices on the side? I just want to make sure her 1st b/day turns out perfect!
PErfect cake.. sounds yummy already
can u share ur fav. book for making cakes.. i couldnt find the name.. i would love to buy it and try baking cakes from it please
Deb,
I can’t thank you enough for sharing this recipe. My boyfriend’s grandmother turned 92 this week, and I made this cake for her party. She loved it! I was really pleased with the way it turned out, too. I think it may be the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth. But most of all, I was glad I could do something to make her feel like the princess she is. Thanks!
- Lea
Made this for my daughter’s birthday with fresh farm-stand organic strawberries and it was DIVINE. Thank you for sharing your good taste with the world.
This cake is absolutely amazing! I started it at 2 in the afternoon and had it done and decorated by 4 – that includes have to bake the third layer separately as I only had 2 round pans. (Definitely used the freezer to cool them down :) I used fresh strawberries and got my boyfriend to mash them up, worked very well. I think it’s the most delicious cake I’ve ever had – and everyone at the birthday party agreed. I love the icing too, but the cake is so delicious it could almost stand on its own. Thank you so much for this cake, I’ll be sure to make it whenever strawberries are in season (and even if they’re not). (p.s I only used a hand mixer and it was fine, came together beautifully.)
Do you think I could sub raspberries for strawberries? The pink lady in question has a strawberry allergy! Boo!
Looks like commenters 143, 192 and 213 tried it successfully.
Deb, I halved the recipe, tweaked a few of the measurements and it made two dozen cupcakes exactly. They were amazing! And the batter was ridiculous. I should’ve never tried it, like you said–but I couldn’t help myself. I also made it with fresh strawberries and it turned out fantastic. The egg white/milk mixture with a drop of food coloring looked like strawberry milk. I was pretty tempted to drink it. Gross.
Thanks for the recipe.
http://www.acozykitchen.com/pink-lady-cupcakes/
I was looking for a strawberry cupcake recipe to make for my dad on Father’s Day. He loves anything red , I thought your pink lady cake sounded delicious and decided that it would be perfect. I decorated the cupcakes with slices of fresh strawberries. I shared them with my grandparents, neighbors and co-workers. They were a huge success. My mom wanted to copy the recipe and was thrilled to see that it came from you. Thanks for sharing your great recipe!
P.S. My dad says” Hello” . Love, Your Cincinnati cousins.
Lori — What a delight! I am glad you all enjoyed the cake. :)
So I’m decorating this tonight. I have the layers frozen and ready to go. The function is tomorrow. It will need to go in the fridge overnight – uncovered presumably given the size. Is this wise? Should I wake extra early and get busy with it then? Maybe make the frosting tonight…..Decisions! Your wisdom is sought please Deb!
I made this cake for my friend’s birthday, though she doesn’t like cream cheese frosting (I know, right?) so I used a cointreau whipped cream frosting instead. At any rate, I have never received so many compliments for a cake before… someone even thought it was a professional product! So, thank you so much for this recipe; it is now in my permanent collection.
My daughter loves to help me make recipes I find on smitten kitchen. We looked through your cake recipes together and this is what she chose for her 6th birthday on Friday. She is all excited to help make it and is loving the whole pink theme, though I think the recipe had her at cake with strawberries and cream cheese frosting. There is no way I am going to be able to keep her from licking the spoon! I am definitely raising a foodie with a sweet tooth. Thanks as always Deb for providing yet another recipe that will be a hit. You’re famous in my family now.
Tasted great, but the texture was off… it was so dense it was embarrassingly hard to slice. Next time I think I will whip the egg whites. I don’t have a mixer and stirred everything by hand, so perhaps I didn’t get enough air in there? In any case, I will definitely make this again.
Also, I added 3 tsp of Grenadine because I was out of food color. I think this helped the flavor a little and will add more next time.
deb thank you so much for this recipe! I was put in charge of making my grandmothers 86th birthday cake and it was a hit! thank you for all of your beautiful pictures and fun posts! cant wait for the cookbook!
This recipe made the most delicious cupcakes!! I used fresh strawberries instead of frozen because they are in season.
thank you so much!
Hi,
Just wanted to say thanks for the recipe!
I converted your measurements into UK weights, and adjusted the quantities to make 12 cupcakes. They were lovely!
If anyone wants the UK measurements I have posted all on my blog (and linked back to you, of course!)
Thanks again!
How might baking times change if you turned this into a cupcake recipe?
i am making this cake for my birthday this year!!!! i am in love with this recipe just from reading it and now i can hardly wait till aug. 22!!! happy birthday to me!
It’s my daughter’s 4th birthday (tomorrow!) and I would like to use this recipe for a 2-layer sheet cake. Do you know if I need to adjust the measurements to fit two 9x13x2″ pans? Thanks!
I made this cake for my bf’s birthday but my frosting was really soft and slightly transparent, it didn’t cover very well and was super tough to use. I tried refridgerating it because it is summer time here in NY and it was quite warm but I was wondering if it’s supposed to be that way or not. It was also sort of hard piping it out because it was so goopy.I tried my best! Oh well!
Just made this with raspberries and it turned out beautifully; it was a massive amount of batter, but it’s made a massive amount of cake, so I’m happy with that! I only had 7 egg whites (I’ll say it again: MASSIVE) so I beat them up until they were pretty frothy and added an egg yolk, and I didn’t have any trouble with texture or it being too dense, or anything like that. This is one impressive cake!
I just made this cake and it is just as delicious as the over 200 people before me have said.
However, I do have a one question concerning the density of the cake. I baked mine as cupcakes, and they came out almost like a moist banana bread (albeit strawberry). I was wondering what I could have done wrong to get the texture so un-cupcake-like. I think I may have mixed the batter for too long when adding the eggs and milk, is this possible? I kind of like the cake as it is, so maybe it is just a dense cake in general? But your photographs seem to indicate that it is definitely lighter than mine came out.
Hey there…I just came across this cake and it looks amazing…question: Are the strawberries measured before or after they are pureed?
Kim — After. (It would otherwise say “1 1/2 cups strawberries, pureed”)
I am in the middle of making a wedding cake for a friend and she sent me the link as a starting point for her strawberry wedding cake, and I, in turn, proceeded to explore a fairly wide set of variations. Some of them address some of the questions in the comments, especially those looking for a lighter version, so I thought I would report the results.
First, the ingredients (and method) of the original recipe reminded me of the velvet butter cake in the Cake Bible, with the addition of course of the strawberries, and they are indeed close to each other. I like that cake, but I usually find it a little dense and (I, know, sacrilege) almost too buttery, so I almost always do something half way between that and a chiffon cake and I figured that would be a good starting point. So, I made one batch of batter of pink lady cake more or less as given here, and one batch of batter following the orange chiffon cake recipe from Rosie’s bakery cookbook, substituting strawberries for the orange. I then made 8 different combinations, varying the ratio of chiffon to butter cakes, and adding back some extra yolks to some of the combinations to see what that does.
Let me start by saying that all of the cakes were delicious, and quite different from each other, so it is just a question of what you like. The angel-food light-as- a-feather cake lovers went for the 100% chiffon. It was indeed lovely and light and moist and what I would have wanted, especially when it was fresh out of the oven. The bride and groom (who were not there but were represented by the bride’s mom) however were looking for “medium dense.” We decided the 2 chiffon to 1 butter cake ratio test cake was the one best meeting that criterion. We also all agreed that the pure butter was just a bit too heavy. The two big differences, I think, are that the egg whites in the chiffon batter are beaten and folded in, and oil is used instead of butter. The oil gives it that moistness (but having some butter of course keeps that nice flavor and texture) and the folded whites makes it nice and fluffy. The cakes with extra yolks (ie closer to having whole eggs than just whites) were richer than those with fewer yolks, which again was nice but not what we were looking for. If any of you want to experiment further, I would suggest taking a pound cake recipe and seeing how it works with strawberries. Or raspberries – out of curiosity I did make one more sample cake with raspberries and that was my husband’s favorite, but we’re sticking with strawberry.
We also experimented with frostings. We tried a butter cream, cream cheese frosting, whipped cream, mascarpone frosting, and combinations of these. We thought the lightness of the whipped cream and mascarpone complemented the cake best and kept things a little lighter than the cream cheese or buttercream. So, I am filling the cake with stabilized whipped cream and fresh strawberries and frosting with a mascarpone frosting on the outside, with strawberry curd on the top of each tier and fresh flowers and berries for decoration.
I made this cake twice in the past 2 days…the first I followed the recipe exactly. The second time I made a few small changes. The first change was I took 1/2 cup of sugar from the dry ingredients and pureed them with strawberries, and let them sit for about 10 minutes. I also creamed the butter and strawberries together and then added in the dry ingredients. It made the cake a lot less dense, with a stronger strawberry flavor. DELICIOUS!
Addition to my previous comment – DO NOT use the cream cheese frosting recipe given here. For me, at least, it was way way too loose; not stiff enough to fill a fairly hefty triple layer cake. I’ve been battling this all morning, and there are streaks of frosting all over my kitchen surfaces. In the end I had to scrape most of the mess off the cake and begin again with a much stiffer frosting; beating a lot more butter and just adding in ladlefuls of the original recipe until I had a thick enough frosting (alternatively you could add like, another box of icing/confectioner’s sugar, but I hate a painfully sweet frosting). It would be a lovely frosting for a lighter, one-or-two layer cake, but it just can’t hold up to this.
My Pink Cake Lover is a Prince, he even wanted it for his Grooms cake.
The Pink Cake of our dreams is a Peppermint Cake/ and PINK it is! I’m not a piping decorator So your cake designs are only surpassed by your photography.My first on your site and I am SMITTEN.
P.S. I don’t get the Hoopla over the Red Velvet cake either.
Queen of Red Velvet,
Robbie
The cakes are cooling right now and im sorry but I had to, I HAD TO TASTE THE BATTER and I have a stomachache now I licked the whole kitchen aid bowl clean haha
My pink princess is my big sister, she turns 30 today so this is going to be just perfect! I think i’ll tuck some strawberry slices between the layers along with the frosting C:
Thanks again!!!
I’m freaking out, this frosting is too soft and the cake is all jiggly, I had to put it in the fridge and now im hoping for the best tastes yummy though!
I made a strawberry cake for my daughter two years ago, and I am still reminded how horrible it was. The cake was dry, and dense, with very little flavor. So tonight to prove that I am, in fact, a baker I tried this recipe.
Everyone LOVED it! I wasn’t sure about the baking powder amount, it seemed like too much, but it really turned out great. My mixer didn’t seem to mind the thick batter, although I am glad you mentioned it would be like ice cream, as I am like you and did not have the time or patience to wait for the strawberries to thaw, and I would have thought there was something wrong. I will add more food coloring, and the recipe makes a large amount of frosting, so I will add more to the middle next time, since I had quite a bit left over.
Also, it is a really large cake, what do I do to keep it fresh for the next couple of days?
Hi Deb,
I’m hoping to bake this for my birthday next week, but I’d like to scale it to a 6-inch 3-layer cake. I’ve been Googling around and noticed that batter volune varies sizably when using a a 9-inch pan with a 2-inch height or a 1-1/2-inch height. This might be a dumb question (I’ve never baked a layer cake before), but which did you use? I want to make sure I do the math right.
I’m a first-time poster but a long-time fan of the site — thanks so much for sharing your wonderful recipes!
Made this for my mother’s birthday this weekend (along with the Neapolitan cake from this site, we had quite a crowd), and it was widely appreciated in spite of the many pitfalls I encountered:
1. I had no problem with the cake recipe, and mixed the ingredients just as stated. It had a wonderful strawberry flavor (I used very fragrant and sweet strawberries, the last of the summer from local farmers in Normandy), though I would scale down the sugar next time (but that may be because my strawberries were really sweet!). It was a beautiful pale pink, but if you’re making this for a pretty pink princess, you might want to add the food coloring as deb says. And the texture was light but not airy. Definitely not angel-food but not muffin-like either. Was fine with me anyway.
2. However, my layers were not as tall as in the picture. Two things: I did not whip up the egg whites (but then again, that’s not stated in the recipe), and since i have a tiny mini-oven, I could only bake one layer at a time. But even my first layer was not as tall. I did notice that i did not have enough batter to fill my pan 3 times properly. Maybe it wasn’t quite a 9-inch?
3. I wanted to do a strawberry and fig pairing (kind of melding the last of the summer with the beginning of fall), so I used fig jam as a filling. It was good but too sweet. I should have used something else to offset the cake’s sweetness.
4. the icing was a disaster: it was the texture of “creme anglaise” for those who know what that is. Basically very watery and un-spreadable. I left it in the fridge hoping it would firm up, but no success. I live in France, and we don’t get tubs of Philadelphia cream cheese here so I tried to use the closest equivalent (a 681-gram or 24-oz mix of mascarpone and “fromage frais” or “petit suisse”). It is entirely possible that the water and fat contents of these cheeses were different enough to prevent the icing from firming up as it should. Also, it remained quite grainy, with globs of unincorporated butter and/or sugar, that no amount of beating/whipping/other form of torture seemed to fix.
Any hints on how to make a successful cream cheese frosting in France with no product labeled as “cream cheese”? Any luck with other types of cheese?
I just started reading your blog two weeks ago and am now hooked! Thank you for all the fantastic recipes.
I baked the pink lady cake for my niece’s first birthday today. Since I had all these egg yolks left over, I decided to make a lemon curd and turn the pink lady into a strawberry lemon cake. It was decadent!
I made this cake today and used the fudge frosting from the espresso cake. I decorated it with chocolate covered strawberries. It was awesome!
Your recipes never let me down and Sky High is on my Christmas wish list.
Do you think that I could easily make these into cupcakes? Any changes that would be required? I made this cake last year for my daughter’s 4th bday and it was heavenly…now it’s my younger daughter’s 2nd bday coming up and she is a cupcake lover so I was thinking of adapting this. Any tips would be appreciated. And I love your baby’s hair and smile! And your website!
Many folks throughout the comment section have made them as cupcakes successfully (see 117, 118, 194, 210, 220, 231, 242, 243, 251, etc.). I suggest baking times in comment 166.
Wow! Your ENTIRE website and recipes are amazing!! I have taken note of this and am headed to the grocery store for strawberries now. I’m ready to make this cake! Thank you for everything!
I made this with raspberries for my husband’s birthday, and everyone LOVED it. THe Raspberry taste really comes through, and it was perfect with the cream cheese frosting. I doubled the frosting, and did have leftover, but one recipe would not have been enough.
A note on the colour – the raspberries gave it a purplish colour – a very, very noticeable colour. So since it was my husband’s cake, we called it a “Lavendar Manly Cake.”
I made this cake last year for my daughter’s first birthday. I made a trial one & it was okay. Batter did not taste like strawberry ice cream – it wasn’t very sweet and didn’t have much of a strawberry flavor. I wasn’t sure if I added all the sugar though. The second cake turned out fabulous, receiving the compliment of being one of the best cakes ever. I had requests to make it every year for her birthday. Well, we divided up her party between the different families this year & are celebrating it 4 times. I am on cake #3. Cake #1 turned out like Cake #1 from last year. Cake #2 was much better, but not amazing. Cake #3 is in the oven. The batter is very bland again. I did not completely thaw the strawberries in Cake #1 and thought maybe that was the problem. I thawed & drained the strawberries from Cake #2 thinking maybe that made the improvement. However, I thawed & drained them for Cake #3 and it seems the cake will not turn out good. Am I losing strawberry flavor by draining the liquid or are the strawberries just bland ones? I am bound & determined to make “the best cake ever” once again, but I don’t know what my problem is. Also, although Cake #2 tastes better than Cake #1, the texture was denser & drier. Maybe because I drained the liquid? Last question, promise! After adding the milk/egg white mixture, should the batter look grainy/curdled (the “strawberry ice cream” fat part, separating from the liquid) or should it be smooth? Thanks! (I haven’t had a problem with any of your other cake recipes. All turn out incredible!!)
I think you’d probably lose strawberry flavor by draining them — remember, those juices were inside the strawberries when they were frozen. Curdly appearance is normal, if I remember correctly. Just a butter/fruit/egg whites thing.
I just made this, and all I can say is WOW! It is a HUGE hit with the husband. I have to say though, I have made no less than 10 of your recipes, and all of them are 5 stars. You are the best!
Hi Deb. I love your site. I love your recipes. I adore your stories. However, I have to say, I did not love this cake. That’s not the worse part, however. Sadly, I made this cake for my daughter’s 6th birthday party and she did not like this cake at all. The look on her face held so much disappointment. She ate the frosting (I made a vanilla buttercream for the kids), but did not touch the rest of the cake. None of the other children ate it either. I don’t know what happened — I cannot think of anything I did wrong. The cake was very dry and tasted only vaguely of strawberry. My husband tells me that it was not that bad — that it had a texture that many would enjoy. It is quite possible that my feelings about the cake were tinged by my daughter’s disappointment.
Deb! I just started reading your webpage and I love it! You are so funny.
I just made this cake tonight and I put a little in one cupcake so I could try it and all I can say is WOW! It is great. I took some of the comments advice… I sifted all of the dry ingredients together about three times. Then I added the purée and butter together and added the dry ingredients to the wet. No problem with it being too thick for the mixer. When I had all the ingredients put together, the batter seemed a little thick so I added some milk until it seemed like it was cake batter consistency.
I love your tips too. I had to make my own cake flour as the store i went to did not carry it. I also used your tip about cooking the cakes at a lower temp (300 instead of 350) until they were done and the came out flat! I am so impressed. It is so light and fluffy. I have frozen the layers as I don’t need the cake for two days and I don’t want it to dry out.
I am thinking about doing a strawberry buttercream frosting and putting strawberries on the top as I am not very good at writing on cakes… What do you think? The cake is for a lady who is turning 87. If anyone deserves a Princess cake that is over the top, I think she does!
Yes, I know JUST the bestie I want to make this for! Finally got all-purpose flour today too!
Thank you, thank you, THANK you for your marvelous blog! -wonders if she’s one of the youngest readers- Ah well.
Yeah, she’ll want it pinker… yeuck. Don’t get me wrong, it’s just that I’m more-much more-partially inclined towards your red velvet cake, since that’s my adoration colour.^_^
Wow I just found your blog and I LOVE IT!! I am fairly new to cooking and BRAND new to baking. Your recipes and writing style are ADDICTING to say the least. For my very first from scratch cake I made your pink lady cake- for my daughters 2nd birthday! Thank you for a wonderful site, with wonderful pics and recipes!
So I read comments 131 and 137 but I’m a little confused. If I only have self-rising cake flour, can I use it, and do I have to do anything to it? Or am I better off with the regular flour/cornstarch combo? Thank you!!
This recipe is not for self-rising cake flour. You’d be better off with the flour/cornstarch combo. Enjoy!
I made this cake and ended up putting a chocolate buttercream frosting on it. It was fabulous!
Thanks again Deb!
My mother and I made this today for my 22nd birthday, and honestly this was one of the most magical batters I have ever tasted. The cake was delicious, but incredibly rich and reminded me of why I don’t eat cake more than once a year. It wasn’t really pink, but I expected that, but it had the subtlest strawberry flavor and was incredibly delicious. I do believe though that it would be most helpful for others to thaw the strawberries as said in the other comments before you puree them. I also made a slight change and creamed the butter and puree before adding the flour and dry ingredients, which yielded a smoother batter.
Made this for a pink loving co-worker’s birthday. It was quite a hit, everyone loved it.
I made cupcakes out of this for my daughter’s Valentine’s party at school. The batter made 45 cupcakes and they are delicious. I also baked them for 22 minutes as recommended and iced with buttercream frosting with some of the strawberry puree mixed in. Again they were delicious and so pretty!
I’m making these for my son’s valentines day party with his home school group :) they are baking and the first batch was amazing, and sooo pretty ^^
This cake was great! I have three girls and they loved it. I gave it to them for their 7th birthday.
So glad to hear this came out well for people! I have one important question. How many people do you think this would serve? I am planning on making this cake tomorrow for my daughter’s “fairy party” on Saturday and there will be 25 people there! Eek! (Everyone said yes – oops!). I am wondering if I should make some extra cupcakes to have on hand – just wanted to make sure there’s enough cake for all. Thank you! I’m so excited to make this cake.
I feel like any cake book would tell you you’d need more cake than this, but I think you’d be okay if you have other desserts on hand. The cake is very tall (3 layers) and thin slices are best.
Making a two-layer version now–will have to reuse my single springform pan for the second layer. I was so sure I had layer cake pans, but when I looked I had everything else: square, 9×13, and four pie plates. In my cold, March New England kitchen, the butter never really gets soft even when left on top of the stove with the oven on warm, and I don’t think I thawed the berries enough before pureeing them…so we’ll see! I plan to ice with a mixture of mascarpone and whipped cream, a trick I learned from a cookbook called COOKWISE, and decorate with edible flowers for a baby shower.
Oh, and I am using King Arthur flour cake flour for the first time. Now, how to use up those egg yolks!
I made these delicious cakes for a baby shower (yay for girls!) and the strangest thing happened. I made them the night before as mini cupcakes and left them loosely covered in plastic wrap after they had cooled. When I came into the kitchen in the morning the paper had pretty much fallen off on a lot of them! It was the weirdest thing. I ended up taking the cupcake wrappers off and serving them without. Any ideas why??
And yes….the batter is unbelievably delicious.
I made this yesterday for a friends birthday, but used fresh raspberries instead of strawberries, and it turned an amazing purple color! It was so soft and airy and DELICIOUSLY perfect. Thanks for this, and your amazing blog! :)
I’m on the hunt for the perfect cake for my 26th birthday party. This will be the third birthday party that I have ever had, and my first party had a strawberry cake with strawberry icing, strawberry ice cream and strawberry soda. I still remember the artificial deliciousness! Thank you for posting this more natural version I cannot wait to test it out. I’m thinking of frosting it with the swiss buttercream you used for the wedding cake in your other post. What is your (or anyone’s) view of tinting that frosting pink as well? I’m really into pink lately. Would this cake, made pink, be more striking with white icing or vibrant magenta?
Deb, I can’t wait to make this cake! I will be bringing it to an afternoon, outdoors potluck. Do you (or any other folks out there) have thoughts about whether the buttercream or cream cheese frosting would be safer to sit out for a few hours? I don’t want to give anyone food poisoning…
Thanks!
I just saw in your Cake Tips that your swiss buttercream recipe can stay out all day, so I’ll plan to go with that! I guess I did a search of the comments on this page for advice but hadn’t initially thought to look there as well. Thanks!
wow, this looks great…i’m lusting over this cake right now!
Hi Deb,
I made this cake over the weekend for my friend’s birthday. I made strawberry Swiss butter-cream frosting for it – which was out of this world awesome – I used the recipe you have on your wedding cake page and just added 8 ounces of fresh, chopped strawberries at the end and whipped it for a long time – the frosting turned pink and tasted like a buttery, strawberry dream.
The cake on the other hand was not at all what I expected. I did taste the cake at its batter stage (I had to!) and it tasted very floury. After baked, the cake was very dense, pasty and didn’t have a very strong strawberry flavor at all. I followed all the directions exactly. I wouldn’t make this cake again. I will be on the hunt for another strawberry cake though because I need something to go with the amazing frosting!
these were UNREAL as cupcakes! made about 25 regular sized and i made 6 jumbo just because i had the pan to do so. i added a 2 drops of red food coloring to the cream cheese frosting and topped with fresh strawberries. perfection!
Made this cake for a coworker’s surprise wedding shower and it was a resounding success. I used raspberry puree instead of strawberry, which is probably why my cake came out a delicate shade of purple. I frosted with the swiss buttercream recipe from this site and it was really beautiful and tasty.
The raspberry flavor came through really well, but I thought the cake was a touch too dense. No one else who ate the cake thought so though, so it might be my nitpickiness coming through. Thanks for the great recipe, Deb!
Deb, you always come to my rescue when I need an awesome cake recipe! This morning I was struck by a fanciful idea: making a blueberry cake with pureed berries instead of whole ones in the cake batter. (This is purely out of curiosity, but the way. Oh, and also because I love the color purple. Pink… not so much.) Obviously it was impossible to find a recipe for that, but I figured a strawberry cake recipe would adapt nicely. Ha – not so obvious – all I could find online were recipes requiring cake mixes and strawberry jello. Ew! I didn’t look on SK at first, because having perused your collection of cake recipes several times, I didn’t recall a “strawberry cake” in the index. “Pink Lady”, though, that did the trick :)
Anyway, I’m going to try this out tonight. I’m hoping that ever-so-slightly increasing the puree proportions, and adding some nutmeg (which seems to complement blueberries awesomely), will bring out the blueberry flavor sufficiently.
Thanks for such a great site – can’t wait for your book!
Hi so I have mostly admired the beautiful cakes you make, and I bookmarked the layer tip post you made for reference. I am however a vegan baker so I will be veganizing this recipe (not the difficult part). I am going to cut this recipe down to two layers because it will be easier to veganize the egg whites then, will this mess with the integrity of the recipe? Also are the egg whites whipped to peaks with the milk added or just till they’re frothy?
This cake looks beautiful and I think after a few trials it’ll be perfect for part of my sisters wedding cake! I want to do two layers strawberry and two layers “angel torte.” I tried a strawberry cake recently that was super dense and would be to heavy for a summer cake.
THANKS
Just made this last night. It was nice :) I’ll have to imagine it with cream cheese frosting, though, ’cause I only had cream on hand. Whipped cream with sprinkles was perfect for the little girl who was here with her parents for dinner though! Or “spinkles” as she called them ;-)
Made the cake last weekend and very pleased with the results. I pureed fresh strawberries rather than using the frozen and made a coulis and drizzled that when plating it — that sure finished it off well and balanced the richness of the cream cheese. Thanks, I really enjoy your blog!
I came home tonight w/ fresh berries thinking I wanted to make a strawberry cake. I came to SK first ( as I usually do) and found this post. It’s baking now and I can’t wait! I thought you were crazy with the mixing the flour/sugar first, but I stuck with ya-lol. Thanks for all your great recipes!
I just used this recipe for cupcakes and used (frozen) raspberries instead of strawberries … and it was really good! It turned out more purple than pink but was delicious (I topped it with a lemon cream cheese frosting)…thank you for sharing the recipe!
Malcdi please advise how your blueberry version worked out?
1. “which has a Swiss buttercream-based one I am eager to try when I am not rushing to finish)”
as far as I can tell from what I see online, the icing the book recommends is white chocolate cream-cheese, w/ optional fondant. here’s a link to a blog w/ the white choc. creamcheese icing
http://www.lottieanddoof.com/2008/12/baby-cakes/
or see here (p. 209)
http://books.google.com/books?id=wl58_L_h9r4C&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=sky-high+strawberry+surprise+cake&source=bl&ots=ef36JbGt9y&sig=w2XLoKJTIWF8DfnUx-WQf_9PLE8&hl=en&ei=W1HjTZ-LCo_UgAeZkuW2Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=sky-high%20strawberry%20surprise%20cake&f=false
I thought the white chocolate added flavor – if you have it on-hand, I’d say go for it. (I was not ambitious enough for the fondant, however)
2. Deb, what did you use for the pink dots/lettering on top of the cake? (I tried tinting some of the white chocolate cream-cheese icing pink, but it wasn’t stiff enough for piping)
ah…i see you now that you wrote “frost the top and sides of cake with remaining frosting, reserving a small amount if you wish to tint it and pipe a decoration on the cake” …..
was your icing really thick enough for the piping decoration?
It is thick enough for piping. Almost anything that you can spread is. If it feels like it has gotten too soft, you can always chill it for a few minutes and it will begin to firm up.
I’ve been reading your blog for just over a year (ever since I made your “perfect birthday cake” for my friend the January before last). Since then, you have inspired me to greater heights of either ambition or insanity. Take your pick.
I purchased “Sky High” on your suggestion, and then I actually doubled this recipe, baked it in three sheet-pan layers, and carved it into the shape of lungs for the anniversary of another friend’s lung transplant: http://twitpic.com/54gzmn The pink color was great for, um, “authenticity.”
It was a huge hit – so thanks so much for the inspiration!
Hi Deb! I made this cake for my friend, Laura’s birthday/Preakness Party, and it was such a hit! Thank you for all of the wonderful advice while guiding me through the process! I decided to cover the top and the middle layers with strawberries (like your strawberry chiffon cake) as I iced/assembled the cake. The balance of the strawberries with the sweet icing that you recommended was perfection! Thanks again and I can’t wait for your cookbook!
Blasphemous question comin’ up, but: if one were not so worried about the pinkness of the layers, would it be acceptable to just use 4 whole eggs? :/ i just have this terrible issue with tossing out the yolks (and do not have the time/ambition/resources to find and implement yolk-using recipes). i am curious because when i made this for a friend a few months ago, it was such delicious batter but the cake came out unbelievably dense. Everything was at room temp, but maybe the problem was that i only had a hand mixer? Been reading the comments and would like to have a go at it again: it’s my eleven-year anniversary with the bf tomorrow and i even got heart-shaped cake pans! Loved the taste of this cake (might even go with half raspberries, to see that purplish hue!), though, so i just need advice on the eggs front! Thanks, Deb :)
I am now a 2 time Pink Lady veteran. The first time I made the cake precisely according to the recipe and it was delicious. My only concern was that it was more like a Grey Lady cake. Yes, my cake was not pink but a light grey. Could it have been the fresh strawberries? It certainly tasted like strawberry, so no real worries. The second time, I decided to take the plunge and use whole eggs and food coloring along with my fresh strawberries. Viola! Pink cake and still just as tasty. I also gilded the lily by adding sliced berries between the layers and for decorating the top.
A tip for Aisha #270: I live in France too. Here’s what I do for cream cheese frosting recipes. Simply use St Moret/fromage a tartiner (even better are the knock-off generic brands). Since it is not as thick as Philadelphia, do not add any other liquid. Just add powdered sugar. Bon chance.
Made this as the middle layer of a “Neopolitan” engagement cake… 5 layers total- from bottom to top the layers were chocolate-vanilla-strawberry-vanilla-chocolate… this really did well with the others!! Now going to make it on it’s own… will report back :)
Jana- how many whole eggs did you use??
Tori, I used 4 whole eggs instead of 8 whites. Love your idea for a Neopolitan cake – I’ll try that too.
Just a note to those who are afraid to mix the butter into the flour: This method is called “reverse creaming.” It was popularized not long ago by Rose Levy Beranbaum (author of “The Cake Bible”) after she apparently did a bunch of scientific research on the (scientifically speaking) best way to bake cakes. This method, like some of her other methods, was sort of controversial in the baking community. But it does work. I was very skeptical at first, too, but now I do almost all of my cakes with the reverse creaming method.
Is this recipe really from Sky High? I don’t see it in there and I definitely don’t see a swiss buttercream recipe. Which one is it? Thanks!
I made this last night, and made the mistake of talking to my kids as I was counting flour scoops…oops! Too much flour, but it still tastes amazing.
The cream cheese frosting that has a Swiss buttercream vibe is not for this cake, if I remember correctly, but for another. Just look for the cream cheese frosting in the index.
I love this site so much and am anxiously awaiting the cookbook!
I have now made this cake twice – once as a cake and once as cupcakes. It is so lovely and so yummy! Light and fluffy. Fun and flirty.Totally worth the extra effort. I vow to never make a boxed cake again. I am making it today for my own bridal shower because I couldn’t stand having anything but this cake.
Thank you for the fantastically edited set of recipes and the witty commentary, Deb!
Hey Deb – do you think this could be done with blueberries as well? I’m thinking about doing a baby shower cake where it’s both pink and blue to keep people guessing. Since I’m scaling it up for a larger crowd, thought it might be fun to do 2 pink layers and one blue, or maybe just putting in some blueberry filling. Would the mix of berries be too much?
Looks like commenters 212 and 305 tried it. I see no reason it wouldn’t work, but would love to hear feedback if you try it. I think Little Jacob would love a blueberry cake for his birthday!
Thanks Deb! I just received my copy of Sky High on your recommendation and am now super inspired by the idea of doing a preserve swirled into the batter the way the Lemon-Blueberry cake worked in the book. I’ll definitely report back!
I made this cake today and while it looked wonderful I was not so keen on the taste. It is hard to put my finger on it but it was a bit doughy. It did seem quite odd that the butter and sugar are not creamed first as is usually the case with most cake recipes but I assume that must be right. Still you can’t really get the flour, butter and sugar light and fluffy because it is so thick so maybe I should go back to creaming butter and sugar first. What do you think?
so if you already answered this, sorry I scanned. I want tomake this for my godson’s third birthday. His current favorite colr is pink. I was thinking about adding to strawberry puree into the frosting to make it pink, but wasn’t sure what this would do to the texture/ longevity of the cake? Thoughts? Otherwise I’ll just go for food coloring. Thx
I made this cake 2 nights ago for my friends birthday. It was awesome!! The cake was moist and flavorful; not too sweet. The cream cheese icing was perfect. Decorated the outside with pink sugar pearls and it was certainly fit for a princess. Just fabulous!! This is the 3rd recipe I’ve tried from your site and I’m hooked!!
I made the cake today with a combo of strawberry and blueberry layers – it was a huge hit with the baby shower crowd! The cake tasted great and looked terrific, especially with the multi-color insides. My one note is that the blueberry layer was not as light and fluffy as the strawberry layers – the blueberries don’t puree as light and liquidy as the strawberries do so the cake was denser, which certainly wasn’t bad but not as amazing compared to the texture of the strawberry layers. However, everyone was really amazed that the flavor of the berries really does come out. Great success!
i made this yesterday and it was delicious. The cake was moist and the strawberry flavor was very pronounced. i frosted it with strawberry flavored swiss meringue buttercream from your blog. Thanks for sharing!
I have tried this cake twice and both times it has turned out more like strawberry bread…what is going on?! It looks like it should be so awesome, but I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong! :(
I just made this for my husband’s birthday this past weekend and it was delicious! Super moist! It’s my new favorite strawberry cake recipe.
Hi Deb.
Before anything else, I thought you should know that SK is my new addiction – you’ve helped me rekindle my love for baking :-)
Regarding the pink lady cake – is it ok to freeze? Also, have you tried it with any other icings? I’m not sure if I’m keen for a cream-cheese one and I’m curious if there is another one that could be nice. Otherwise I’ll go for the Swiss one that has been mentioned a few times in the comments…
So excited to make this cake!!
I just made this cake in anticipation of our first daughter being born ANY DAY NOW! She’s almost a week past her due date, so I’m hoping the pink deliciousness will prove sufficiently tempting for her to decide to make her grand appearance.
Eloise — I haven’t frozen it before, and not with frosting either. But I don’t see why the cake layers can’t freeze, wrapped well, until you need them.
Is it okay to use buttermilk instead of regular milk in this recipe? I’ve found that it works better in most cakes than regular, but I’m not sure with this one. Thanks!
It’s a bit more complicated to swap buttermilk because it usually reacts a little differently with leaveners. Often recipes that swap buttermilk for milk would have you reduce the baking powder and add some baking soda but I can’t provide exact adjustments you’ll need without testing it.
We are celebrating my mother-in-law’s birthday tomorrow and I want to make this cake as she is an absolute princess and wonderful! This will be perfect if I can get it right. I just made the peanut butter chocolate for my son last month and it was outta this world. re. the egg whites here – you only blend them and them mix them into the batter in three batches? They are not whipped until stiff and then added? Do you mind clarifying this step for me – thank you! I absolutely love this site!
Do you think I could do this with peaches?
By the by, I made this cake for my daughter’s birthday in June and froze the layers. Icing the cake was so much easier. I recommend freezing to anyone.
As far as substituting news paper for parchment paper, wouldn’t the ink from the news paper get into the cake batter?
I just made this cake for my husband’s birthday. I frosted it with buttercream and marshmallow fondant. It was delicious.
YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT THE BATTER. WHY DON’T I EVER LISTEN. It tasted Exactly like strawberry ice cream.
I made this for my daughter’s first birthday with the white chocolate buttercream icing from “Baked.” Fantastic! Thanks for the inspiration.
I have my very own pretty pink princess turning 5 next week who has requested nothing less than a pretty pink cake. Who am I to refuse? I have to ask, though, if anyone has had any luck making this in a 9×13 pan? I don’t have enough cake pans and I’d really rather frost a single sheet cake. Do you think that would work, or maybe a 9×13 plus an 8×8 to handle the volume of batter? Let me know what you think. Thanks!
Ok, so, I made this cake using a 9×13 + 8×8, only after 30 mins of baking it was still runny in the middle and I had to leave to take my husband to work and then go to a birthday party. So I turned the oven off and when I got home 5 hrs later, the cake was perfectly baked, neither under/over cooked. That makes this recipe a keeper in my book! Also, the cake was delicious, which helps, and I’m not usually a fan of anything not chocolate. Only change I would make is maybe using a white chocolate frosting next time, but still, I’m just thrilled it turned out!
Ok, so I just made this recipe for a little cake decorating party I’m having with a few friends tomorrow. Because other people are bringing cake, too, I didn’t need to make that much, so I actually just third-ed it. (Is that a word?) Instead of the 2.6 or whatever egg whites I just used two whole eggs. Everything else goes into thirds pretty nicely. It made 12 cupcakes plus maybe 1/2 cupcake worth of extra batter, which I may have eaten straight up since the batter is delicious. Now I’m going to make a batch of frosting to take with me. I’m thinking a strawberry flavored cream cheese….
FYI – I also made the double chocolate layer cake in thirds, and ended up with one fairly thick 6? inch layer. Perfect to practice my piping skills.
Anyway…I’m slowly making my way through all your various cake recipes. Thanks for the great work. I’m getting excited about the cookbook.
Oh, and have you ever made the coconut cake recipe that Alton Brown does on Good Eats? If you like coconut, that cake is to DIE for.
My husband made this cake for me for my 30th and it was fantastic! I watched him struggle with the very thick batter and I had my doubts (as did he), but, wow, all that hard work paid off. He even decorated it for me, which I didn’t expect. We both agreed the texture and sweetness level of the cake were just right, especially when paired with the cream cheese frosting.
Thanks for the recipe and helping to make my 30th memorable.
This cake looks delicious! But it uses so many egg whites! What should I do with all the rest of the yolks? I would love to make this but egg yolks don’t keep very well. And Deb, did you add dye to some of the cream cheese frosting to decorate with? It looks very nice!
I did tint some to write on the cake. Egg yolks are the backbone of custards, ice cream, mayo… basically, everything delicious.
I just made this recipe and it smells delicious coming out of the oven. I recommend pureeing the strawberries in a blender ONLY if they are kinda thawed, otherwise it was quite difficult to do without adding additional liquid. I added ~5-6 drops of food coloring to the batter and it turned a nice pink color. I haven’t cut into the cake yet but I will soon. When I put the cake on a cooling rack to cool though the cake started cracking in the middle, not sure why…I left it in the pan to cool for ten minutes. But cream cheese frosting should hide it all. I can’t wait to eat this~in spite of the 5 total sticks of butter used, haha.
Please could you advise if you make a stiff egg white mixture or do you simple whisk the egg whites and milk together. It is just that when you mention incorporating slowly into the cake mixure, this is what would usually be done with stiffly beaten egg whites.
Many thanks.
The egg whites are not beaten. This isn’t a sponge-style cake where they’d be whipped for lift.
What a beautiful looking cake! I’m attempting to make this cake into a 3 layer 12″ round cake for my baby girl’s first birthday..very ambitious for a first timer! Any suggestions on how to adjust the recipe, would doubling the recipe work? Would a 12″ – 3 layer cake be enough for 40 people?
Like Jana @318, I ended up with a Grey Lady cake that tasted good but needed a lot of frosting to cover up the color.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/24708_10150172772305424_831380423_11913290_1985054_n.jpg
I really suspect this might be due to the use of fresh instead of frozen strawberries.
If your cake took on a grayish tint, my guess (although I haven’t tested it out on this recipe) is that you were using a baking powder with aluminum in it, which can react and cause discoloration in baked good with acidic berries, such as this one.
I made this cake for my birthday and it turned out wonderfully. Very tender cake and the icing was just the right amount.
For anyone looking to make it pinker, hibiscus tea is very good for a natural tint.
I was wondering if I could make this in 2 10 inch pans? I’m trying to find a good cake for my daughters upcoming birthday. Thanks.
I made this for the first time for my daughter’s 1st birthday in 2008. Absolutely phenomenal – rave reviews, requests to make it a birthday tradition, etc. – so I made it for her other party (other side of family) and it was not too good. I thought the cause could be losing count & forgetting some sugar. Last year I made it again for both parties. I was so disappointed. No strawberry flavor, rather dense in texture, not moist & sort of doughy/pastey tasting. Not giving up, I made another this year. Bleck – still the same. I just couldn’t get myself to serve it, despite the time, money & energy I put into it, so I made another. Although it got lots of compliments at the party, I personally thought it was still too dense & pastey tasting, and I could barely taste strawberry. I give up & am not making it for her 2nd party this year. I’m looking for that fabulous, light, moist cake, but not finding it. Why is it dense, not moist & lacking in flavor? Am I not mixing it enough, or over mixing, or what???
I have recently read your blog, beginning to end, like a book. Thank you so much for such a lovely persona, entertaining reading, and delicious, well-executed recipes. I made this for my daughter’s first birthday party with swiss buttercream. Delicious and beautiful! I did not grow up in a house that cooks so every foray into the kitchen is fraught with angst. Thank you for helping me become the mommy I want to be.
Do you think I could cut the cake recipe in half and make a smaller cake?
I made this yesterday and added the food coloring as you suggested. It didn’t seem to make a difference. I added two drops and my cake turned out like your picture. So there you have it. I suppose if you added more than 2 drops you’d get something darker but that might make the cake look weird.
I made this recipe today for my 7 year old’s birthday today and I have to say it was not good. I don’t know what I did, but it had a very heavy, flat tasting quality. I did not do any substitutions, and I did re-read the recipe and I did follow it to the letter. It was pretty though, but I’m sorry to say that most of it will be thrown away.
I have made this cake twice, for each of my daughters on a special day for them. I will have to say a huge THANK YOU for sharing this recipe, every bite that was taken was thoroughly enjoyed. My mother in-law got so disturbingly mad because i gave so much of the cake away to our guests that there was not enough to satisfy her needs. I will keep this around FOREVER!
I just made this cake following the recipe exactly and it turned out really well. Thanks Deb!
I was desperate to make this cake as soon as I stumbled across the recipy, and I’m glad I didn’t wait long because it is soooo yummy!! Even though im not used to using cups as measurements and I’ve never even hear of cake flour before, I followed the recipy exactly (although i used fresh strawberries as i
Cannot find frozen anywhere!) and what a yummy cake! First time making cream cheese frosting too and i was not disappointed! I also used the left over strawberries on top of the cake which was lovely! I’ll be making this cake any more times!! Thankyou for the recipy!
have you tried using beets or cranberries or pomegranate juice? Or rhubarb? I read about these somewhere but wasn’t sure if the results were any good.
I made this cake this weekend for my daughter’s birthday (made a princess castle!) – I decided to try using gluten free flour (rice flour with potato starch, tapioca) and it turned out great! I ended up using slightly more strawberry puree and needed additional milk because the batter seemed too thick. It was absolutely delicious (a little heavier than normal cake but it was still soft and moist) and it was the hit of the party! Thanks for the recipe – I’ll be making this again and again!
Thank you for sharing! I made a trial cake for my daughter’s birthday last weekend. I was low on eggs, so I used four whole eggs and I accidentally omitted the milk (pregnancy brain). It still turned out delicious. It made a great sized sheet cake but I’ll be making the fancier layer cake this weekend.
This recipe has become quite a hit at my house…thank you for sharing!
@saloni (#371) i made a half recipe as cupcakes and added a 1/4 inch slice of roasted beet to the strawberries for color and they came out beautiful and delicious
Thank you for a wonderful recipe! I didn’t think I would like strawberry cake (I’ve never had it) but my preschooler requested it for her valentine’s day party. I had enough batter to make one 9×13 cake for cake pops for her class, 24 mini heart-shaped cupcakes to take to work and 12 more regular sized cupcakes for my family. We loved it! :)
I made this cake for my daughter’s birthday yesterday. IT IS AMAZING!! I added 1/4 C cornstarch to make up for the fact that I didn’t have cake flour, and it worked fantastically.(I should not that it was in place of a 1/4 C of flour). The thing I loved most about this cake was the texture and taste, It was so easy to work with and to maintain it’s structure while I frosted it. I didn’t add the food coloring, as I find the taste to be more important than if it is pink or not:) I then covered the outside with thin strawberry slices. So pretty and everyone had rave reviews.. My oven may be off but it baked up in around 30 minutes.
This was a fantastic cake. My 15 year old daughter made it for her friend’s birthday. It was sturdy enough for her and another friend to frost without tearing it to pieces, but it wasn’t tough or dry at all. She actually said that she was glad she made a cake without using a box and that it was not that much more effort than a box cake. Thanks for helping my daughter learn that baking is worth the effort.
Hello, this looks lovely. I’m more of a cupcake girl (tiny or large) do you have any idea how this would work as cupcakes? Specifically bake time. And do you think halving it would be fine?
Hi Sarah — Check comments #289, 303, 326, 375, 376 for people who have made these into cupcakes recently. In comment #274, I note 10 other commenters (including myself) who have made these as cupcakes and offer advice.
Oh, thank you!
Going to make this Monday for my Aunts birthday! I’m excited to try it!!!
I made these as cupcakes for my two-year-old’s birthday party yesterday and they were beautiful–pink and light and perfectly domed (even though I lost track of how much cake flour I’d added and had to do complicated weight conversions and subtraction based on what was left in the box!) I had to use a whole 12-oz bag of frozen strawberries to get 1 1/2 cups of puree. Baking time was about 22 minutes total for standard size cupcakes, but I lost track of time for the mini cupcakes–maybe around 12? I cut the frosting by a third since I prefer more like a smear of frosting on my cupcakes and had exactly enough. Too bad I forgot to buy fresh strawberries to slice for garnish.
If you don’t want to have eight egg yolks sitting in your fridge and waiting for custard/ice cream/adding to tomorrow’s omelet, you can buy a carton of egg whites in many grocery stores. 8 whites is about 1.5 cups for the brand we had and then I’ll make the remainder into meringues or use them in our waffle recipe.
I was wondering if you could tell me where you purchased those great pink candles (I like collecting candles).
Also, I will be experimenting this week with strawberry cake recipes as I have an order for one coming up and appreciate the time you put into testing out recipes that, in my experience, have worked out wonderfully.
Alicia — I think they were from a drugstore or grocery store — in the sprinkles area.
I’ve made this recipe twice now as cupcakes, and they turn out very, very well. Half the recipe made 15 cupcakes (though I filled the cups rather *ahem* full). As suggested in previous comments, I baked them at 350 and checked after 15 minutes — they were close to done, but 2 more minutes made them perfect. This second time, I substituted the swiss buttercream from this site for the cream cheese frosting, whipped in some leftover strawberry puree into it, and they were TO DIE FOR!!
I made this cake for my 3-yr old neice’s birthday. I put some (about 1/4 c.)strawberry puree (I used fresh) in the frosting as well as the cake, and the frosting was delish. I also used pure fruit jam in between the layers. This cake was a huge hit, and my neice called it her “ballerina cake.” It matched her tutu. I followed the directions as written and had no problems at all. The cake itself is perfection – light but firm, very moist, great crumb.
I’ve been following your blog for ages now- all those pictures make my mouth water! killed my diet too, as right after i saw your double layered chocolate cake i had to go and try it out! as predicted, it was AWESOME. i’m going to try to bake this beaut of a cake for my baby girl’s birthday this saturday! its perfect for her princess theme. thankyou so much, deb!
Deb, What should I do if I have only two pans? Can the batter sit in the mixer-bowl or in the fridge while the two layers bake?
In addition to my 2 inch high pans, I do have a 3 inch high pan. Can I bake the third layer in this pan together with the other layers? because of the high sides, I’m afraid the heat will disperse differently than in the 2 inch high pans,
Hi Bunny — I only have two pans and I always let it sit. I usually take one layer out as soon as it seems safe, wash it then rinse it with cold water so it’s cool when the batter goes in.
Huh, I only now see that only half the comment was sent. Weird, and by now L have totally forgot what the rest of the comment said.
But that doesn’t matter anyway– Thanks!
I’ve made this cake three times now. The first time I used Deb’s mixing method and got muffin-like cake, which tasted better after sitting in the fridge for a few days. It would be perfect for breakfast. The other two times I mixed the fresh strawberry puree with the butter, alternated dry and wet ingredients, then folded in whipped egg whites. The texture was light and airy, and delicious to boot. I found the cream cheese icing too sweet even after reducing the sugar in the cake, and found that a whipped egg white folded into the frosting helped tone it down.
I made this for a going away party at work and it was a huge hit!! I have a hand mixer so it was tested a little bit in trying to mix this huge amount of batter together, but it worked out just fine! I would advise thawing out the strawberries a bit before pureeing, it took me a long time to get them the right consistency and I ended up adding the smallest touch of hot water to loosen them up more. The amount of icing was perfect and I added a bit of jelly in between my 1st and 2nd layer and that was extra yummy! This is a huge cake and easily served my 20+ co-workers! I will definitely be making this in the future!!
I don’t ever comment, but I’m an avid reader of your site and have tried several of your recipes and they were fantastic. However, I am finally prompted to comment because I was making this cake, and while mixing together the dry ingredients, butter, and strawberry puree, my mixer broke! There was a smell of burning plastic, I turned it off, and it wouldn’t start again.
Technically, it’s my mother’s mixer. And she got it as a five year anniversary gift, which makes it nearly twenty-six years old. It was probably the poor Sunbeam’s time; it had a good run. Considering I’ve been dying for a KitchenAid for ages, it’s hard to be to upset, and of course not at you.
But I have two questions: most recipes I use involve creaming together butter, eggs, etc, then mixing in the dry ingredients. Is there a particular reason for this method? The batter was extremely thick, which seems to have done my poor, geriatric mixer in.
Secondly: if I refrigerate the unfinished batter for a day or so, will it still be good if I get a new mixer tomorrow? It’s a lot of butter, sugar, and flour to go to waste, and the beaters for my hand mixer, unused for so long, have disappeared. Since I hadn’t incorporated the eggs yet, it might be all right to leave covered outside the fridge, but it’s 90 degrees where I live at the moment so I’m not sure. I imagine that I’ll have to bring it back to room temperature if I do this, but I’m concerned about what it would do to the texture of the cake.
Meg — I am so sorry about your mixer! Do you have a hand mixer? I really think one can get away with hand mixers for years and years, and cheap (I bought a more expensive one a few years ago and haaate it; my cheapo $16 one purchased in 1999 was a dream I should have never retired) without having to go all out for the KitchenAid. However, when and if you do, you’ll love it and they’re wonderful. Especially if you like cake.
The general all-purpose cake method is: creamed butter with sugar, eggs added one at at time, then adding the dry and wet ingredients from their separate bowls in the Dry, Wet, Dry, Wet, Dry order. Until just barely mixed. The goal is to keep cakes as light and tender as possible. The butter holds air and volume; flour, if mixed too long, will start activating its gluten and make for a tougher cake. The book this cake is from often turns this cake roadmap on its head because Huntsman didn’t always find it necessary to create extra dishes to get the same effect. Hope that helps.
I’m making this and its even more perfect when one happens to live in the strawberry capital of the world.:)
A real quick question. I have never used cake flour….so just to be clear I am assuming this recipe calls for cake flour and not self-rising cake flour?
Not self-rising. I would definitely note it if that’s what people needed (or the cake would be a disaster for everyone).
can i substitute whole eggs for the whites? i don’t really eat eggs and don’t want to just throw out 8 yolks. thanks
In some cases, you can replace every two egg whites with a whole egg, but I haven’t tested it in this cake. If you’re willing to experiment, however, it’s worth trying. Good luck!
Hello!
First of all, I love love your site! When I grow up and have my own place I dream of having a kitchen as fun and lovely as yours seems to be :)
I just wanted to ask if you had any tips for icing cakes? Mine never come out as smooth and perfect as yours (perhaps a potential post if you have time??)
Thanks Deb!
I made this cake recently following the directions and it turn out dry. Do you have any tips to keep that from happening in the future.
Just made a 1/2 batch of this as a trial birthday cake for my almost-three-year-old daughter. I added 1/4 tsp of strawberry essence, which seemed to work quite well, and used a 23cm square tin, as this won’t be a layer cake. I may have neglected to measure the strawberries (oops!) but it has turned out lovely – I like the dense but soft texture, and it goes fabulously with the frosting (in which I used 20ml lemon juice instead of vanilla, for a little freshness).
I will wait with bated breath to see how it is tomorrow, and if it would cope with being cut out into the shape of Dora the Explorer….sigh.
Thanks for this recipe: I looked long and hard for a strawberry cake that actually involved fruit, and although I have admired your site for some time, it’s the first recipe I’ve actually made. Having also ogled that incredible chocolate peanut butter cake that so many commenters referred to, it definitely won’t be the last!
Hi Deb — I know this recipe is from ages ago, but I’m wondering if adding some rosewater to a regular vanilla buttercream frosting (or even the cream cheese frosting you used) would go well with the strawberry flavor? I want to bake this cake for a friend’s birthday and was wondering! Thanks.
I don’t much care for rosewater so I can’t say if it would go. But if you’ve liked it in other strawberry desserts, you’ll probably like it here.
Made this cake for my birthday. It is Wonderful!!! We made it with fresh strawberries. Not sure if it taste different from one made with frozen but it did not hinder it in anyway. I CANNOT stop eating it! Ah the calories!!
Will this work out in a ceramic baking dish? Like the ones you’d make pot pie in? I ask because it would only be 2 people eating this and I thought a small cake would be enough.
How many strawberries would you say to puree? A whole pack?
I made this to celebrate our middle daughter’s third birthday and it was a huge hit! She loved that it was pink-ish (and that her name was written on top in pink frosting). My oldest daughter has already requested that she also get a pink cake for her birthday. Next time I think I’ll make a special trip to the store for cake flour as my substitution of AP flour + corn starch seemed too corn starch-y (I went by weight, not volume, and there seemed to be a LOT of corn starch in the sifter and I noticed a slightly starchy aftertaste…. though no one else did). Regardless, the cake was yummy and the birthday girl was thrilled. Thanks for another fabulous recipe SK!
Just made this, and it came out perfect. The only problem was that I didn’t have enough strawberries to puree, so it was a little less than what the recipe called for…. If there is anything I would change next time is definitely using the recommended amount or more, still delicious but wish there was a stronger strawberry flavor. I also used 4 egg whites instead of 8 and it came out this beautiful light airy fluffy cake. I put jelly between the layers, and frosted it with a banana/fruit frosting. I was rushing it a bit and stacked the cakes only to have the top half slide off a half hour later. Not the best presentation, but overall I love it and it is delicious. If you are thinking about making this, trust me its worth it……and also unlike me (i.e. lazy to go the store to get more strawberries, or stack the cakes too early) hopefully you’ll have more patience. haha
I made this cake for my husbands birthday by his request for strawberry cake. I used your recipe for swiss buttercream frosting. The cake was super moist and wonderful, although it could use a stronger strawberry flavor. Any suggestions besides adding strawberry geletan?
I love this cake! I actually used this recipe to make a full sheet cake sized ocean with a fish as a second layer for 100 people at a work event. I wish I could show you the picture. Everyone said it was the best cake they had ever had. Thanks for your blog! I going on 2 months of only cooking recipes from your blog :)
Hi!
I am going to make this cake for my best girlfriends birthday as a surprise (and what a surprise it will be as I tend to buy more than I cook)!
I am unclear on two things:
The icing: do I need to refrigerate it prior to applying the icing to the individual layers and sides of the cake?
Tinting: when you say tint the remaining icing to decorate, do you mean add extra color or..?
Fingers crossed for my attempt, it could very well (uh, most likely) go drastically wrong.
C.
SWDC — No, no need to refrigerate the icing. It will get firm and hard to spread. If you wish to write on the cake, you can reserve a small amount of icing and tint it with food coloring, as I did for the birthday cake shown.
Hi Deb,
Love your recipes. First, I made this today for my daughter’s birthday on Sunday.
But it does not look like it rose as high as yours ? I cut a tiny slice out to see if okay as worried I overbeat the batter and that it is too dense. Tastes okay but not super light and fluffy as other readers indicate. There was a huge amount of batter so mixed strawberries with part of butter then mixed a bit of dry at a time in cusinart to get to ice cream stage. What I am wondering is was I supposed to beat the egg whites ? I did a double take when I read your instructions bec. usually beat and fold them in. I did not. Mixed with milk and added play doh like mixture to it a bit at at time using my beaters. Any hints ? I think I will try again half recipe tomorrow — out of butter and having some wine so no going out tonight. Oops forgot also tried your brownies, and you will flip — I added fleur de sel instead of salt — not too much — and I love the choc and salt flavor. Have you tried that ? (The ones that you whip up in no time brownies !!)
Well, tonight I made cupcakes using half the recipe. Did this all in my food processor and it worked out really well — just the right amount and I did not overmix this time. These will be the cakes for my daughters birthday party — I hope she will like — they are not too sweet which is what she requested.
I already ate 2 — one without icing and one with. Delish !!
Hi, I am nor sure about posting this question because I see how many answers you have patiently given since you posted this recipe! But I will go ahead and understand if you don’t respond. My daughter asked for a pink strawberry cake for her birthday (a common trend I see) and I found this. It looks wonderful! But after reading ALL 416! comments, I am at a loss on what to do. What I am pondering is, do I make this as written, or do I go with some of the tips from other bakers (such as beating the whites and folding them in)? I wish I had time to do a trial run but I don’t. Are the people ending up with a dense cake doing something wrong? Or is it supposed to be like that? Thanks in advance, I will be making this anways, one way or the other!:)
Hi Willow — If you’re super-nervous, it cannot hurt to make a test layer or mini-batch of cupcakes to see if the cake is right for you. I think it is wonderful as written. Egg white only cakes, also called “white cakes” but of course this one is pink, tend to be a bit sturdier than ones made with whole eggs.
Hi Deb, thanks for your reply!! I’ve decided to try it as written. I researched the “reverse creaming” method and now it’s not so scary to me. I will do my best and I will try to remember to report back!
Hi
Just wondering if this cake can be made the day before it’s served. Can I make it and then refrigerate it until the next day???
I just made this cake for a friend’s birthday and it seemed to be a success! There are a few things I would modify about the recipe next time:
1) Add a little more strawberry puree than what is called for. Friends thought it tasted great, but most of them didn’t realize it was a strawberry cake because the flavor was very faint.
2) Add a couple of drops of red food dye to the batter. This would amp up the “pretty pink princess” factor and also signify that there’s some sort of berry flavor. Without the dye, the cakes end up a pale pink/beige color (I dare say flesh-toned).
3) Cut smaller slices when serving people. HOLY MOLY this cake is dense!
Should I measure the strawberries and then purée them, or purée the strawberries and measure the purée?
Hi Deb. when I saw the title, I thought this was going to be a cake made with Pink Lady apples! I am not too disappointed though, as it sounds great, and perfect for a girly party.
My cake came out a little dense as well, and in the future I’ll try tips others suggested (as well as beating the butter with strawberries because the flavor was so faint!), but I baked it for quite awhile at 300 degrees as your cake tips suggest for a flatter cake. Could that make the cake more dense?
Just made this for my roommate for her birthday! Used frozen raspberries because the store was out of strawberries. The flavor is really strong and delicious, and the cake actually turned out purple.
Yum!
I really need to know how long to bake these as mini cupcakes? I see some people have made regular size cupcakes with this recipe, but not mini’s (unless I missed someone’s post saying they’ve done mini’s). How long would you say to bake these?
I just made this cake for my niece’s 4th birthday, she’s deep in the fairy princess pink phase and asked for a strawberry cake. I halved it and made a 5″ two layer cake and had enough for 5 cupcakes as well. So of course I tasted a cupcake, delicious! I did use 1 1/2 T. of strawberry Quik in the milk, it made the cake a beautiful pink and added another layer of strawberry flavor.
I was excited about making this for my daughter’s second birthday but disappointed in the results – it’s dense and crumbly (in fact the third layer split into three pieces, and because the icing was quite thin I couldn’t get it to stay on the cake and had to discard it), icing was almost too thin to use despite adding extra sugar and chilling it, the color is more nude than pink despite using two drops of food coloring in the batter, and the flavor is kind of pasty. if I had time I’d make another cake before the party but I’m going to have to serve it. I usually like recipes on this site but I should have paid attention to the mixed reviews on this one.
Here’s a picture of my cake, I didn’t use any food coloring (just some strawberry quik as noted above), I used the Sprinkles’ Strawberry Frosting recipe on MS.
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AcsmzRw1aNmjkA
I made this cake for my daughter’s 4th birthday today and it turned out beautifully. We couldn’t find cake flour so after consulting Joy of Baking, I discovered that it’s ok to substitute 3/4 cup of all purpose bleached flour plus 2 tablespoons of cornstarch for one cup of cake flour. Also, I juiced a beet and used a few drops of this instead of food colouring for both the cake and the frosting. Worked perfectly! Thanks for this great (and delicious) idea.
I love your website! I am looking forward to making this cake for my very girly daughter’s Our Little Sunshine themed birthday party. I hoped to make the icing yellow to fit the party’s theme with a very girly pink middle. Is there any lemon-flavored icing you might recommend to compliment or does the cream cheese really just take the cake? Thanks so much :)
Hi Sarah — You could add a few drops of lemon oil to a frosting for flavoring.
I have been looking for this exact recipe. I wanted to make a strawberry cake with cream cheese frosting for my daughter’s 2nd birthday. Like you, I am not a fan of cake mixes and much prefer to make things from scratch. I cannot wait to try this. I will be back to let you know how mine turned out!
Deb-I read several comments that said this had a faint strawberry flavor. Is there anything I can do to make that flavor stronger? Boil the puree or roast the strawberries or add jam?
For the frosting, could I add puree to your swiss buttercream frosting?
Love the book! So excited to read all the articles about it!
I made the cake and added extra puree but it was still almost impossible to taste strawberry. It had a nice flavor but wasn’t worth the trouble given the lack of strawberry flavor. Is there any way to help that?
Hi Deb! Your’e cakes always turn out amazing and I’m a regular visitor. I just noticed that the cream cheese recipes for this cake versus the Spices Apple Cake (subway cake) have different proportions! Do you prefer one over the other? Is there a reason why you went with different recipes? I hope to hear from you.
Thanks and Congratulations on the book!
OMG do NOT try to make this cake unless you have a seriously powerful mixer. I cut this recipe by a third because three 23 inch cake tins can’t fit in my oven but still my poor vintage Sunbeam wasn’t up to the dense strawberry icecream stage of the recipe anyway. The cakes are cooling now but they seem dense and flat and I’m wondering whether I can be bothered icing them or just cut my losses and call it a disaster. I’ve wanted to make this cake since I first read this post but it seems a bit tricky as a batter. I find the Sky Cake recipes a bit complex for me. What’s wrong with creaming the butter and sugar and folding in the flour.
oops I meant 23cm or 9 inch cake tins. I have to covert all the cake recipes for metric.
Hi Deb – I have been looking for a birthday cake recipe for my daughters 3rd birthday party and this looks perfect. How do you think the recipe would convert into two 12 inch rounds (40 people in attendance – yikes!)? Would you make any changes? Thanks!!
So delicious. It is almost crippling how good this is. I made it for my kids’ Valentine party. I sent the link to all the moms. This recipe makes 3 dozen generously sized cupcakes. Thanks for the excellent recipe!
I would just like to say that I’m pretty much addicted to your blog and cookbook. So many great recipes, so little time! I’m wondering if I can make this cake (iced and all) 2 or 3 days in advance, since you said it’s super moist. Thanks!
Abby — Yes, but I’d a) brush it with a syrup, b) probably freeze the layers wrapped tightly in plastic instead, if three days.