This strawberry cake is really the simplest and fastest cake you've ever made. This cake is a great way to use fresh strawberries throughout their season, with 500g/1 lb of strawberries on the inside and outside! You'll love the hint of lemon flavor and the yogurt's ability to keep the crumb moist.
No stand mixer, no creaming of butter. Only one dish and a wooden spoon!
Cake with strawberries
For three years, I have been working on a recipe for a pink sponge cake with pink icing that is made entirely of real strawberries, no tricks involved.
For now, though, savor this recipe for the most effortlessly simple fresh strawberry cake you've ever made—the cake you bake with all those strawberries!
Refusing to use expensive ingredients such as food coloring, strawberry flavoring, or freeze-dried strawberries is the definition of not cheating.
Unlike delicate sponge cakes prepared with creamed butter, the yogurt and oil-based recipe keeps the cake's crumb pleasantly moist for days, while also giving it just enough structure to support the weight and a tone of fluids released by the strawberries.
The texture is quite soft, but not as delicate as traditional butter and sponge cakes. I used it for this Lemon Yogurt Cake and this Blueberry Cake, if you'd like to read reviews from people who've tried it (spoiler alert: it's good!).
Ingredients for Strawberry Cake:
• Strawberries – 500g/1 lb to be exact! Some goes in the cake, most goes on top
• Flour, sugar, egg, baking powder, vanilla, salt – all the usual suspects in cakes
• Lemon:The zest of fresh lemon complements berry-based pastries wonderfully! Evidence -> Blueberry Lemon Loaf, Blueberry Cheesecake Bars, Strawberry Cheesecake; and
Oil and yogurt or sour cream – as noted above, this is what keeps the crumb really moist as well as adding a touch of tang, reinforcing the brightness we get from the lemon.
How to make this easy Strawberry Cake
Creamed butter isn't used in this recipe; therefore it's made by hand in a single bowl. Whisk together the wet ingredients and then mix in the dry ones.
At first, I was a little enthusiastic about this, but the batter took an hour and forty minutes to cook because the strawberries made it so wet and heavy! There should be a tiny amount of strawberries inside the cake. When you bite into the majority, they exude juice while still holding their shape incredibly nicely.
I'm so unimaginative that when I see baked products containing strawberries, my first thought is cream. I have to have a (big!) dollop of freshly whipped cream with every meal.
But I had to indulge my wild side because it was so good that I served it warm with ice cream lately. Much like most cakes, this one has an interior that is slightly "pudding-like" while it's still warm out of the oven, which is why most cake recipes strongly suggest that you wait to cut into the cake until it has cooled fully.
Still, the warm strawberries and the "pudding-like" texture of this Strawberry Cake enhanced the flavor in some way. Especially after I spilled that experimental, hazardous scoop of ice cream on the side.
