How to Make the Best Fresh Strawberry Cake

Photo: Meredith

Earlier this week, my significant other sent me a text out of the blue: "Will you make me a strawberry cake with cream cheese icing?"

Not being one to ever deny a dessert request, I said, "Sure... why?" Naturally, her answer was, "I don't know, I just want one." Obliviously, she offered to pick up a box mix and can of frosting on her way home from the office. In the nearly two years we've been together, I believe she's seen me bake something from a boxed mix once…

Come to find out, the girl didn't know there was any other way to make a strawberry cake. I first asked that she never mention canned frosting around me again, and then told her I'd gladly grab fresh strawberries from the farmers' market to bake up a cake. This triggered a slew of concerns.

Hold on now, I don't want chunks of strawberries in the cake!

The cream cheese icing needs to be plain, don't do anything weird to it.

Will it even be pink??

Bless it. The truth of the matter is that Duncan Hines cannot hold a candle to a fresh strawberry cake made from-scratch. And I'm thrilled to be the one to expose my sweet companion to the light.

That said, whether or not she realized, her questions did reiterate the fact that not all from-scratch strawberry cakes are created equal. The most difficult aspect of making a sublime strawberry cake is really infusing your cake layers with fresh strawberry flavor — without the aid of a weirdo flavoring agent like strawberry gelatin.

Most people aching for a classic strawberry cake aren't looking for a yellow cake with pieces of fresh berries folded in. And so, here are a few key pointers I'd highlight for anyone looking to make a great strawberry cake this berry season. None of them are complex techniques; just a few tricks of the trade worth noting:

Ripe Berries Only

This is kind of a given; if you want full-on, potent strawberry flavor, you want to start with strawberries that have ripened to the point that they inherently offer that signature juicy-sweet taste of summer. This is why I do like to grab my strawberries from a trusted source at my local farmers' market; just the fact that they're there with buckets of berries is a strong indicator that these are the kind of in-season berries worthy of shining in a dessert.

However, if you're purchasing strawberries from the supermarket, pick up the plastic container and give them a smell test — if you can smell a bright berry scent through the package, you're good to go. In a pinch, you can use frozen berries, but you'll need to let them thaw first.

Puree AND Reduce

If you're incorporating strawberries into a cake batter, it makes sense to puree the berries into a liquid state, right? Absolutely. However, too many bakers stop right there. And ultimately, they're adding quite a bit of extra liquid to their cake batter that's going to throw off the texture. That's where reducing comes in.

Using about a pound of fresh, cored berries, you're going to want to create roughly one cup of fresh strawberry puree (a little more than that is fine) in your food processor and then transfer it to a saucepan over low heat. Stand by in the kitchen to give the puree an occasional stir, and simmer over low heat for about 30 minutes — give or take a few. You want the puree to reduce by half, so that you're left with about ½ cup (or slightly over) of strawberry concentrate.

0-This step is critical not only because it reduces the liquid in your puree, but it very much intensifies the fresh strawberry flavor. Now, before incorporating this into your batter, you will need to allow the concentrate to cool completely. So, you can make it a couple days in advance or simply pop it into the fridge for an hour or so before proceeding.

Go for White Cake

This may very well be a matter of personal opinion, but I believe the best strawberry cakes start with a white cake base — i.e. a cake made with egg whites, no yolks. They're also usually made using lower-protein cake flour versus all-purpose. Not only do white cakes tend to be more tender than their yellow cake brethren, but they make for a cleaner palette to display the strawberry flavor and color.

Kick Up the Color

I'm sorry to say that if you want a bright pink colored strawberry cake, as so many of us do, you will want to pull out the food coloring. The good news is, you really do only need a drop to get the job done given the concentrated berry puree in the batter. You can use a delicate drop of red or pink if you happen to have it.

I prefer gel food colorings as they don't cause the thinning associated with other food dyes, but in using such a small amount, it really shouldn't matter.

Don't Forget the Simple syrup

I've noted before that I am a firm believer in brushing your warm cake layers with a simple syrup. Beyond helping lock in moisture, in this case, doing so can also further amp up the strawberry presence in every bite.

There's a number of options for mixing up a strawberry flavored simple syrup for the occasion. Chef John has an excellent recipe using fresh berries that will leave you with plenty extra to mix up summertime sips like strawberry lemonade or strawberry margs.

Remember that a simple syrup simply entails dissolving equal parts sugar and water over gentle heat or with vigorous shaking in a tightly lidded container. So, you could also replace some or all of the water in this equation with a strawberry liqueur . Alternatively, you can take my lazy route, and whisk together roughly equal parts water and strawberry jam over low heat until combined. I then prick the surface of the cake layers all over with a toothpick and brush a thin layer of the strawberry syrup over and allow everything to cool down and set before proceeding to frost.

Frost It Your Way

For plenty of folks, a strawberry cake isn't complete without strawberry icing, and I totally understand the mentality there. However, the frosting on the cake is… entirely up to you.

Like my dear partner, I enjoy a fairly simple cream cheese icing, maybe with a touch of lemon zest, to complement the berry bounty within the cake. But hey, you can get creative as you want here, a dark chocolate frosting could be fun for a chocolate covered strawberry themed cake. And I can promise you, no one would ever turn their nose up at a white chocolate buttercream.

Now, my experience in food writing tells me that publishing this list of tips without an actual cake recipe that illustrates them all in action will leave select readers frustrated. To those readers, I apologize.

But the beauty of the above suggestions is that they can be applied to any number of fresh strawberry cake recipes — doing so may simply require a bit of rejiggering of certain elements. Which, as many of you probably already know, it's in the rejiggering and experimenting that we make our greatest discoveries — it's through our ingenuity and creativity that we become better bakers.

So give it a go, play around a bit. And maybe I'll just come back next week with a full recipe after I've filled the request that inspired this entire conversation in the first place.

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