Vanilla Strawberry Sheet Cake
Made from scratch with simple pantry ingredients, this easy Vanilla cake delivers bakery-style results with a rich vanilla taste. Topped beautifully with fluffy whipped cream and lightly sweetened fresh strawberries.
Servings 16
Calories 241kcal
Ingredients
Vanilla Cake
- 200 grams / 1 cup superfine/caster sugar
- 282 grams / 1 ¾ cups plain flour
- 8 grams / 2 teaspoons baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
- 150 grams / 5.3 ounces butter softened
- 83 grams / ⅓ cup whole milk
- 123 grams / ½ 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 ½ cups heavy cream
- 25 grams / ¼ cup confectioner’s/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 25×25 cm or 10×10 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, it’s best to serve and consume within 24 hours.
Nutrition
Calories: 241kcal