HOMEMADE STRAWBERRY CAKE
This Homemade Strawberry Cake is full of sweet, fresh strawberry flavor! Moist strawberry cake layers are paired with a strawberry cream cheese frosting for the ultimate strawberry cake!
Strawberry cake is a favorite of mine and always has been. As a kid, strawberry cake (from a mix) with cream cheese frosting was a fave. I even made it into a strawberry cupcake a while back.
Then I decided the only thing better than that would be to have a strawberry cake made from scratch with all the flavor coming from real strawberries, so made I made this cake. And while it is delicious, I’ve learned a few things since then and knew I could make it even better. How, you ask? A reduction. I first started reducing champagne to use in recipes several years ago, starting with these Mini Strawberry Champagne Cheesecakes. I wanted plenty of champagne flavor, but just adding it as is wasn’t enough. So I started reducing that. Then I discovered that method would work well with strawberry puree and used it for a Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cheesecake, No Bake Strawberry Cheesecake and even Strawberry Whipped Cream.
So finally I decided to revisit my strawberry cake and try it out with a strawberry reduction.
HOW TO MAKE HOMEMADE STRAWBERRY CAKE To make this amazing Strawberry Cake, you’ll start off with your strawberries, puree them and then cook them until reduced by half. Ultimately you’ll pack one pound of strawberries into these cake layers in the form of three fourths cup of strawberry reduction. Rock on! From there, you’ll actually use the reverse creaming method in this cake, as opposed to the regular creaming method, which you see most often around here.
REVERSE CREAMING METHOD
While working with a new mixing method can seem a little intimidating at first, this method is super simple and is totally worth learning something new. I’ve actually kind of fallen in love with it, so you’ll see it around here more. Basically it goes like this:
1. Combine the wet ingredients, aside from the butter.
2. Combine the dry ingredients.
3. Slowly mix the butter into the dry ingredients.
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredient/butter mixture in two parts.
Not only is this method easy, it produces the loveliest crumb and cake texture. It’s so tender and silky. I love it! That said, it has a tight crumb, so you don’t expect it to be a fluffy cake. It’s on the more dense side, but it’s not overly heavy.
So for this particular cake, you’ll combine the strawberry reduction with the rest of the wet ingredients. I added the milk and sour cream to it right away to help it cool down more quickly (impatience!), then added everything else once it was room temperature. You’ll divide the wet mixture into two parts and set them both aside.
From there, combine the dry ingredients and then slowly add the butter one tablespoon or so at a time. The mixer should be on low speed and will eventually the mixture will start to resemble wet sand.
Then you’ll add some of the wet ingredients and turn the mixer up to medium high and beat for about a minute. This is when the air is incorporated into the batter and it gets wonderfully light and fluffy! Next, add the rest of the wet ingredients and mix well. At this point I added a little bit of extract pink color to the batter, just to get a nicer shade of pink. You could leave it out though.
