I Made Our 5 Most Popular Strawberry Cake Recipes and This Is the One My Family Won’t Stop Asking For

Spring has arrived, and the strawberries are sticking their little noses up out of the frozen earth to let us all know it. Strawberry season always feels a little too short to me. Each year I want to make all the strawberry things I can think of from May to June. It’s a short span, so I don’t want to waste my precious strawberries on just any old recipe. For this very reason, I went on a quest to find the best strawberry cake recipe. I tried the top five recipes across our site and found the one I’ll be making for years to come. 

Meet the Contestants 

• Best Strawberry Cake From Scratch, submitted by Gothic Girl 
• Strawberry Sheet Cake, submitted by Yoly
• French Strawberry Cake, submitted by SiriZ
• Strawberry Cake Filling, submitted by Lisa
• Mom’s 60-Year Old Strawberry Cake, submitted by Kay Acton

What Makes a Great Strawberry Cake? 

As it turns out, strawberry cake is actually a pretty polarizing topic and you’ll see what I mean when I get into the superlatives. There are two main camps: the folks who prefer a hot pink cake that tastes like a strawberry lollipop, and the purists who like cakes that taste like real strawberries. I’m here to argue that there is room for both in my kitchen. The best strawberry cakes, either way, are light, fluffy, delicate, and moist. They invoke nostalgia, comfort, and have a robust strawberry flavor that sings “summer is just around the bend.” 

3 Criteria I Used to Weigh the Contestants

• Flavor: I looked for recipes with big, bright, tart strawberry flavor. Strawberry is the main character and should be the most prominent note as soon as it hits your tongue. No need to overdo it with excess sugar, especially when using naturally sweet strawberries. I gravitated towards recipes with balanced sweetness and assertive strawberry flavor.
• Texture: The best strawberry cakes are moist with a delicate, fluffy crumb. The trick here is to avoid gumminess and extra density that can sometimes result from adding extra liquids or fruit purées to batters. This is achieved with judicious measuring and using cake flour, which lends levity without drying out the crumb. 
• Versatility: I judged whether or not the recipes could be transformed into cupcakes, sheet cakes, or otherwise. Multifunctional recipes scored extra points throughout this test. 

The Results 

Best Bakery Dupe

• The Recipe: Best Strawberry Cake From Scratch, submitted by Gothic Girl 
• Average Rating: 4.6 stars
• Rave Review: “This cake bakes up perfect. Everyone loves it and I get calls for it all the time.” —Skittle

There’s a bakery in Birmingham, Alabama, that is famous for its strawberry cake. This recipe comes the closest to mimicking the dessert’s flavor and texture. The recipe’s author calls for creaming together butter, sugar, and strawberry gelatin using a mixer. The remaining ingredients—eggs, cake flour, leavening, milk, and 1/2 cup of strawberry purée—are subsequently added to create the batter, which is then divided between two 9-inch cake pans. The resulting cake is less alarmingly pink than the other contenders, and while it is a little dense, the layers are moist and tender. The flavor is well balanced, strawberry-forward, and while very sweet, less sugary than some of the other contenders. 

Best for a Crowd

• The Recipe: Strawberry Sheet Cake, submitted by Yoly
• Average Rating: 4.3 stars
• Rave Review: “My Family and I LOVED this cake! It is so moist and JUST the right amount of strawberry taste.” —Teresa

I love the ease and hominess of a sheet cake. This recipe calls for a box of white cake mix, eggs, oil, strawberry gelatin, and puréed fresh strawberries. The end result is bright pink, fluffy, and very sweet. The author calls for a simple frosting of cream cheese, butter, strawberry purée, and confectioners’ sugar to be spread over the top of the cooled cake. Many reviewers of this recipe note that the icing is a little runny. I agree! However, the flavor is delightfully tangy and does a wonderful job of offsetting the sweetness of the cake. This would be a great recipe to bring to a potluck or picnic. 

Most Versatile

• The Recipe: Strawberry Cake Filling, submitted by Lisa
• Average Rating: 4.7 stars
• Rave Review: “Easy to make. I used fresh strawberries from my garden. Not too sweet unlike the commercial one.”—WobblyPan2915

This is a recipe for a jam-like fresh strawberry filling that can be put to use in a multitude of applications beyond cake. For this test, I spread it between layers of a simple white cake. Lisa instructs us to combine frozen strawberries with sugar and a cornstarch slurry, simmering until thickened (about 10 minutes). After cooling, the filling is thick, spreadable, and has enough integrity to hold its own between cake layers. This filling can be used in cakes, cupcakes, filled doughnuts, or even as an ice cream topping.  If I were to make this recipe again, I might reduce the cornstarch, swap out the water for orange or lemon juice, and cook it a bit longer to further amplify the strawberry flavor. 

Most Nostalgic

• The Recipe: Mom’s 60-Year Old Strawberry Cake, submitted by Kay Acton
• Average Rating: N/A
• Rave Review: “So good my daughter has it framed in her kitchen” —Kay Acton

This is such a special family recipe—so special that the author’s granddaughter has it framed in her own kitchen. The recipe uses shortcuts like boxed cake mix and strawberry gelatin but adds whole frozen strawberries into the batter, which lends a touch of earthiness. The cake layers are moist, fluffy, and the sweetest of the bunch. When I first read the frosting recipe, which is composed of a single stick of butter, frozen strawberries, and confectioners’ sugar, I thought there was no way it would make enough, but I was wrong. It’s the perfect amount, allowing for a thin coat between the layers and plenty to cover the rest with minimal waste. This nostalgic recipe will transport you straight back to childhood birthday parties and tender moments with Grandma. 

The Winner

• The Recipe: French Strawberry Cake, submitted by SiriZ
• Average Rating: 4.7 stars
• Rave Review: “I found this recipe perfect as is - light and moist, and not too sweet. So glad I came across this recipe. Thank you so much for a wonderful recipe.” —Donna Botelho

I knew as soon as this cake emerged from my oven with its sparkling-sugar crust and lightly browned edges that it was going to be my favorite. This recipe calls for making a simple butter-based vanilla cake from scratch with sour cream—always an excellent choice in my book. The batter is thick, and a whopping pound of fresh, halved strawberries is folded through. The batter is spread into a cake pan and sprinkled with a generous amount of sugar before going into the oven. 

The buttery, sugary, strawberry aroma of this cake filled my kitchen and made me swoon. But the end result was somehow even better than it looked and smelled, with juicy oven-sweetened strawberries in every rich, buttery bite. The crisped edges added texture and flavor to each slice. This cake was the simplest to make and had the most robust strawberry flavor of the bunch. I have already had several requests from my family to make this again, and you better believe I will.