This photo is parked here from back when I made a strawberry cake flavored with 2 cups of strawberry puree and a dash of strawberry extract. It was a nice change from the popular strawberry cakes with white cake mix and strawberry gelatin, but the color was off.
Scratch Strawberry Cake Flavor
The flavor was good with lots of strawberry and vanilla and the texture was dense and soft rather than fluffy. We enjoyed the cake, but at the end of the day, my idea of a strawberry cake is bright pink with pink icing like the kinds moms made back in Texas.
Update
Since posting this, I've noticed some other bloggers have made the cake with modifications including reducing the strawberry puree in a saucepan and using ground freeze dried strawberries in the icing. These are excellent ideas and their cakes have great reviews. For that reason, I recommend using those recipes if you need your cake to be completely from scratch.
Strawberry Cake Update Two
Since posting this I've tried a couple of frostings made with ground freeze dried strawberries. I wanted to love them, but the strawberry flavor wasn't quite what I was looking for. Plus it felt heavy and weird and seems more appropriate in small amounts or on cupcakes than over a whole cake. Personally, I'd rather have a light and fluffy topping on strawberry cake.
For a fresh strawberry cake, I think I'd rather just make a good Strawberry Bread. And for a pink and pretty cake, I like this 9x13 inch strawberry cake or any of the doctored cake mix cakes that call for strawberry gelatin. If you need a quick strawberry flavored frosting for cupcakes, Mela's is very good. It's a cream cheese frosting with some preserves and mashed strawberries stirred in.
T. Martin says
Having spent a lot of time pouring over cake mixed based recipes I can say
this type of cake is one where the outcome is MUCH better when baked from scratch.
Sometimes there is just no shortcut to a good end result.
Donna @ What the Dog Ate says
Hi Anna,
Mine wasn't very pink but it tasted like actual strawberries, which isn't always easy to accomplish when all that butter is involved. 🙂
Mela says
Wish I had all the ingredients so I can bake this cake. We like anything with strawberries. Thanks, Anna for using my strawberry frosting again. It's really good when chilled.
Anna says
This is a good cake for anyone who wants something with more of a natural color. As much as I enjoyed the flavor, I think I like strawberry cakes that are hot pink!
Donna, yours looks good. Was it very pink?
I may have to compromise again and look for scratch cakes that have gelatin in them. This one's next on the list.
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/strawberry-cake-from-scratch/detail.aspx?src=VD_Summary
Donna @ What the Dog Ate says
Yummy! I made something similar using the puree the. The strawberry puree juice is used in the cake and the puree solids are used in the frosting.
http://whatthedogate.blogspot.com/2014/02/strawberry-dream-cake.html
KAnn says
Looks beautiful...I was searching for a fresh strawberry cake several years ago per special request and I struggled to find one that did not use gelatin...I found this one (used my own cream cheese frosting) and it was very good.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Jesse-and-Steves-Fresh-Strawberry-Cake/Detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=strawberry%20cake&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Home%20Page&soid=sr_results_p2i19
Karen Schmidt-Dill says
In the midst of a "ground blizzard" today and severely cold, this looks so summery and I am drooling! Beautiful picture too. I love the dense moist scratch baked cakes so much better than the boxed cake mix kinds.