This Strawberry Cake is just about the quickest and easiest cake you will ever make. Loaded with 500g / 1 lb of strawberries IN and ON the cake, it’s a great way to use strawberries when they’re in season! Yogurt makes the crumb moist, it’s not too sweet and you’ll love the hint of lemon.
No stand mixer, no creaming butter. Just one bowl and a wooden spoon!
Strawberry cake
A pink sponge cake with pink frosting made entirely with fresh strawberries without cheating* is a recipe that’s officially been in development for 3 years.
I’m confident 2020 will be The Year when I finally crack it. I’m getting close – and I’m SUPER excited to share it with you. And while infinitely doable by any home cook, it is quite an involved recipe.
So for now, here’s the cake you make with all those strawberries – the best easy cake recipe you will ever make bursting with fresh strawberries!
* No cheating = no food colouring, no strawberry flavouring, no fancy pants ingredients like freeze dried strawberries.
The cake is made with a yogurt and oil based batter which keeps the crumb beautifully moist for days and gives it more structure than delicate sponge cakes made with creamed butter so it can stand up to the weight and considerable juices that sweat out of the strawberries.
It’s still a beautifully soft crumb, it’s just not as delicate as traditional butter and sponge cakes. I’ve used it for Blueberry Cake and this Lemon Yogurt Cake if you’d like to read feedback from people who have tried it (spoiler: it’s good!)
What goes in Strawberry Cake
So here’s what you need:
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 freshness of lemon works so well in cakes made with berries! Proof -> Strawberry Cheesecake, Blueberry Cake, Blueberry Cheesecake Bars, Blueberry Lemon Loaf; 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
Being that this doesn’t have creamed butter in it, it’s a one-bowl, hand mixed batter. Whisk Wet ingredients first, then mix the dry in.
Some of the strawberries go inside the cake – not too much, I was a little overenthusiastic about this at first but the strawberries made the batter so wet and weighed it down so much it took 1 hour 40 minutes to cook! Most go on top – they hold their form pretty well but burst with juice when you bite into them.
I’m so unoriginal that whenever I see strawberries and baked goods, I immediately think cream. So for me, a (big!) dollop of freshly whipped cream is mandatory for serving.
Though recently, I really showed my wild side when I served it warm with ice cream – and it was to die for. As with most cakes, the inside is a little “pudding like” when it’s still warm from the oven (hence why most cake recipes sternly instruct you to be patient and let the cake cool fully before serving).
But for this Strawberry Cake, that “pudding like” texture with the warm strawberries just seemed to enhance the eating experience. Especially with that (adventurous! risky!) scoop of ice cream I plonked on the side.
It’s terrific both ways – at room temp OR warm. You choose! – Nagi x
Watch how to make it
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Strawberry Cake (really easy cake recipe)
Ingredients
Strawberries
- 500g / 1 lb strawberries , hulled (ie tops removed)
WET:
- 1 cup sugar , caster/superfine best but granulated ok too
- 1/2 cup oil , canola or vegetable oil
- 2 eggs , large (~50g/1.75 oz each)
- 1 tbsp grated lemon rind
- 1/4 cup lemon juice (1 large lemon)
- 1 cup plain yoghurt , unsweetened (Greek or just plain)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract (or essence)
DRY:
- 2 1/4 cups flour , plain/all purpose
- 4 tsp baking powder (or 1 1/4 tsp baking soda)
- Pinch of salt
SERVING:
- Whipped cream
- Extra strawberries
- Icing sugar/ powdered sugar , for dusting
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 200°C/390°F (180°C fan).
- Grease and line a 23 cm / 9" cake pan with baking paper/parchment paper. (Any type of cake pan is fine)
Strawberries:
- For inside of cake: Dice some strawberries into ~1.5cm / 1" pieces to make 1 cup (about 1/3 of the strawberries)
- Topping: Cut the remaining strawberries in half.
Cake:
- Place Wet ingredients in a bowl and whisk well for 1 minute.
- Add Dry ingredients then whisk well until lump free.
- Pour half into cake pan, smooth surface. Scatter over diced strawberries.
- Top with remaining batter. Smooth surface, then top with halved strawberries, cut face down.
- Bake 50 minutes or until skewer inserted into centre comes out clean. (Note 1) If you need to cook longer, cover with foil if it starts getting too golden.
- Stand 15 minutes in the cake pan before turning out onto cooling rack.
- Cool 15 minutes+ before serving warm or at room temp. Dust with icing sugar, and serve with cream or if serving warm, ice cream!
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
Originally published as this Upside Down Strawberry Cake in August 2017 which, due to lack of reader interest (ie virtually ZERO readers!) and some technicality issues, has been replaced with this sparkling new easy Strawberry Cake recipe!
More strawberry recipes
Life of Dozer
When the video camera kept focussing on his big golden head instead of the darn cake!!!
Can you substitute self raising flour?
Hi Nagi
looking forward to making this for tonight as it looks amazing (as usual),someone posted a mention for strawberry upside down cake but i can’t find it on the website? would really like to try that.
LOVE ❤️
This recipe is a keeper.
The only change I made was to reduce the sugar by 2 tablespoons. It was a crowd pleaser and everyone asked me for the recipe.
I cannot tell you all, how good this cake is. It’s by far my most favourite cake ever now (surpassed my Rick stein favourite). Most favourite to make and to have 🤤
This was amazing but now I am keen to also try your Rick Stein recipe – which one??
I love this cake, however I don’t like the appearance of strawberries, as if cooked…
Wow !! Fab moist flavour !! Mine took 1 hr 30 to bake….it didn’t take that long to make it disappear !!!
Made this cake for my husband’s birthday it was easy to make and so delicious used sour cream instead of yoghurt so yummy thank
You 😊
Hi
I was wondering if we could use frozen strawberries instead of fresh
For some reason the store I go to doesn’t have unsweetened plain yogurt . Was wondering is it okay to use anyway in recipe?
Hello Mary. Someone in an earlier comment used vanilla yoghurt and reduced the sugar by half. Or you could use sour cream instead.
Good luck!
I loved the flavor and the texture, but definitely I don’t like the strawberries appearance… probably I need to try withe less temperature/heat.
I noticed that the recipe for the strawberry cake does not mention turning the heat from 390 to 350 in step 5 as it does in the blueberry version although the notes do mention 350 later. So to be clear are we suppose to turn the heat down to 350 for the baking?
Delicious and easy to make👍
Hi, I really like to try to make this cake with gluten free flour, any suggestion on much baking powder I should use or anything else I could add to achieve a moist cake. Would appreciate you input, Thank you
I was wondering if either softened or melted butter could be used in place of the oil! I know the oil helps to keep the cake moist, but I prefer the taste of butter!
Don’t see where, can we substitute sour cream for yogurt?
Hi Nancy. Further up the page where there’s an image of the ingredients under the heading “What goes in Strawberry Cake” , it lists sour cream OR yoghurt. HTH!
Oh my Nagi. I truly stuffed this cake up..big time! In all my wisdom, I really thought there was just wayyyy to many strawberries in his cake….so I only used half of what you said to use. Of course…it was quite dry and not very moist. I feel terrible that I doubted you. 😳😳. I ended up having to make a strawberry coulis to pour over the cake to save it. It worked…sort of. I seriously will never doubt you again. 😆
Recipes always succeed with me when I use this blog, and I am not a great cook. This cake was exceptional. Thank you so much Nagi!
Hi Nagi, I’m a big fan of your recipes! Waiting patiently for your cookbook here in LA.
I was wondering if I could use for this recipe fresh peaches instead of strawberries .
Thank you
Another five star dessert recipe! THANK YOU Nagi! I agree with another reader that using cake bands will help immeasurably with even baking. But if you don’t have these in your kitchen, it’s easy to improvise:
I use a cake heating rod to help cake cook evenly – never have a soggy centre again. You place in centre of tin and then pour in your batter https://amzn.to/3sSK4Ha
Hi Nagi
I love your recipes. I tried this cake last night. The batter was too dry compared to your video so I added more oil yoghurt and lemon juice and it worked beautifully 🥰
A fabulous cake! For those who have trouble with this cake cooking evenly, can I suggest trying cake bands? They’re my new best friend! They seem to work particularly well for this cake. It’s perfectly cooked every time. Yum!
I made this today – delicious! I made some slight modifications (1/4 cup sugar rather than 1/2, a classic vanilla yoghurt instead of plain/greek, and chopped up the strawberries into 1cm chunks and stirred it through the mix before putting it into the baking tin). Thanks Nagi!