Made from scratch with pantry staples, this Vanilla Strawberry Sheet Cake recipe includes fresh lightly sweetened strawberries atop whipped cream and serves 16 people easily for an ideal Spring or Summer cake to take to picnics or barbecues.
Table of Contents
Ingredients and substitutions for Vanilla Strawberry Sheet Cake
- Butter: Unsalted softened was used here as this is fresher than salted, however, you could absolutely substitute salted butter here.
- Sugar: As a result of using superfine or caster sugar, the nice fine granules dissolve into our cake and add sweetness without adding additional flavors. Icing or confectioners' sugar is best for the cream as it dissolves best and helps create a nice fluffy texture.
- Vanilla extract: Pure vanilla extract helps give our cake it's signature and depth of flavor here. You could also add fresh vanilla bean seeds into the batter to really enhance the flavor.
- Eggs: As well as adding structure to the cake, the room temperature eggs will bind everything together, so are essential.
- Plain flour: Plain or all purpose works best here for a nice texture to the cake. You could replace with cake flour for an even more tender crumb, if you prefer.
- Milk: Full fat milk helps add moisture to our cake, but can be substituted with skim or non dairy milk.
- Buttermilk: Helps to add acidity to balance the flavors in the cake. It is recommended to use proper buttermilk here as this has the appropriate cultures needed for the recipe.
- Fresh strawberries: Fresh strawberries are best here with the best way to clean them before use is in a bowl filled with filtered water and 1 tablespoon of white vinegar. Rinse and dry them off and they will keep for several days covered and refrigerated.
See recipe card for quantities.
How to make Vanilla Strawberry Sheet Cake:
Step 1: Cake base: Stir the sugar, flour and baking powder in a bowl.
Step 2: Add: The butter and beat on low until the mixture has a wet sand appearance.
Step 3: Wet ingredients: Add the milk, buttermilk and vanilla extract into a small jug and stir until smooth and pour into the dry ingredients and combine on low.
Step 4: Eggs: Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add in one egg and beat on low until it is fully combined. Repeat with the each egg.
Step 5: Pour and bake: Pour into the cake tin and spread out evenly and bake until golden and a skewer comes out clean. Set aside to cool completely.
Step 6: Frosting: Whip the cream and sugar until softest peaks are reached.
Step 8: Spoon: The cream on top of the cake and smear over evenly. Top with the strawberries.
Step 9: Serve up and slice: Dig in!
More small sheet cakes you'll enjoy!
Vanilla Strawberry Sheet Cake
Ingredients
Vanilla Cake
- 200 grams / 1 cup superfine/caster sugar
- 282 grams / 1 ยพ cups plain flour
- 8 grams / 2 teaspoons baking powder
- ยผ teaspoon sea salt
- 150 grams / 5.3 ounces butter softened
- 83 grams / โ cup whole milk
- 123 grams / ยฝ cup buttermilk
- 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 135 grams / 3 medium eggs room temperature
Topping
- 500 grams / 1 pound strawberries hulled and roughly chopped
- 14 grams / 1 tablespoon superfine/caster sugar
- 340 grams / 1 ยฝ cups heavy cream
- 25 grams / ยผ cup confectionerโs/icing sugar
Instructions
Vanilla cake
- Preheat your oven to 180C/350F and line a square cake tin with greaseproof paper.
- Place the sugar, flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl.
- Add the butter and beat on low until the mixture has a wet sand appearance and no butter portions remain that are larger than a pea (the smaller the better), approximately 2 minutes.
- Pour the milk, buttermilk and vanilla extract into a small jug and stir together until smooth, pour into the dry ingredients and combine on low until no dry portions remain in the bowl.
- Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add in one egg and beat on low until it is fully combined, approximately 40 seconds.
- Repeat with the remaining egg and beat until combined.
- Pour evenly into the cake tin and spread out evenly.
- Place in the oven until golden, approximately 25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
- Remove and allow to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before turning upside down onto a cooling rack.
- Set aside to cool completely.
Topping
- Toss the strawberries and 14 grams / 1 tablespoon sugar into a bowl and stir together. Set aside.
- Meanwhile, pour the heavy cream into a large bowl and sift over the sugar.
- Whip until the lightest soft peaks are reached and the mixture just holds steady on your whisk.
- Spoon on top of the cake and spread out (the more you spread, the stiffer the cream will become).
- Spoon the strawberries on top of the cream evenly. Drizzling over any of the juice in the bottom of the bowl.
- Slice up and serve.
- Dig in and enjoy!
Notes
- Buttermilk: Helps to add acidity to balance the flavors in the cake. It is recommended to use proper buttermilk here as this has the appropriate cultures needed for the recipe.
- Fresh strawberries: Fresh strawberries are best here with the best way to clean them before use is in a bowl filled with filtered water and 1 tablespoon of white vinegar. Rinse and dry them off and they will keep for several days covered and refrigerated.
- Vanilla extract: Pure vanilla extract helps give our cake it's signature and depth of flavor here. You could also add fresh vanilla bean seeds into the batter to really enhance the flavor.
- Square tin: A 25ร25 cm or 10ร10 inch square baking tin works well here, though a rectangle tin of similar size would also work well.
- Storage: This cake will last for about 3-4 days without the cream topping, when kept covered in an airtight container. Once topped with the cream and strawberries, itโs best to serve and consume within 24 hours.
Nutrition
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Made it and loved it?
If you have made this recipe, it would mean so much to leave a review below to help more people find this.
August
Made this cake for a picnic and wow did it leave an impression! I had so many people tell me at the picnic and later how it was the best cake they'd had. Thanks
Sylvie Taylor
Hi August,
What a treat for your friends that you baked and brought this to a picnic. Thank you so much for your review and so glad to hear how much this was enjoyed!