Fresh Strawberry Cake {No cake mix or Jell-o}

This beautiful, pink cake is made 100% from scratch without any cake mixes or strawberry Jell-o, but still arrives at an intense strawberry flavor. It uses quite a bit of fresh strawberry puree, a touch of strawberry extract, and comes out absolutely amazing.

It has the dense, buttery quality of a scratch, homemade cake, with all that strawberry flavor loaded inside.

I made this for a customer with plain vanilla buttercream, but it would be amazing to add sliced strawberries to each layer on top of the frosting too! Fill and frost this cake with any kind of frosting you like!

You’ll need a blender or a food processor to puree the strawberries. I added a touch of pink gel food coloring to bring out the pink color, but that is optional. If you don’t have cake flour handy, you can make your own. Measure 1 cup all-purpose flour and remove 2 tablespoons. Add 2 tablespoons of cornstarch and sift together. Use 1:1 for cake flour.

Enjoy!

Recipe adapted from Completely Delicious.

STRAWBERRY CAKE:

1 cup (2 sticks, 226 grams) salted butter, softened to room temperature
2 cups (400 grams) granulated sugar
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon strawberry extract
1 teaspoon pink gel food coloring (optional)
3 cups (360 grams) cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cup (310 ml) strawberry purée (see Notes)

DIRECTIONS:

TO MAKE THE CAKE:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease 3 8 inch round cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper.
With an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar together on high speed until light and creamy, about 3-4 minutes, stopping to scrape the bowl down at least once.
Add eggs once at a time, mixing and scraping after each. Then add vanilla, almond extract, strawberry extract, and food coloring (if using). Mixture will look curdled.
In a separate bowl sift together the cake flour, baking powder, and salt. Add it to the mixer bowl in 3 additions, alternating with the strawberry purée, and ending with the flour mixture. Batter will be thick.
Divide batter among prepared cake pans and bake until the edges pull away from the pan and the tops spring back when lightly touched, 30-35 minutes.
Let cool in the pans for 15 minutes, then remove carefully and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. You can use the cake layers at room temperature, or chill them in the fridge for easier assembly.

4 thoughts on “Fresh Strawberry Cake {No cake mix or Jell-o}”

This cake sounds great! I’ve been looking for a strawberry without jello. Strawberry extract is listed as an ingredient but not in the instructions. I assume I add it with the other extracts. Correct?