Strawberry Cake Comparison

More experiments going on over here.  This time, of the strawberry variety.  Strawberry cake is one of the best flavors of summer... except that the good strawberries from Florida are harvested in the Spring... whatever.  I'm highly partial to Florida strawberries because I went to college in FL and have very distinct memories of the Plant City Strawberry Festival where I proceeded to not only eat a million strawberries but every food on a stick that was sold there.  It was a good day.

I've only made one other strawberry cake recipe before and it's a Cooking Light recipe which is good, but I don't do light desserts at parties.  That's weird.

As I was looking for recipes there was an abundance of strawberry cakes made with cake mix and strawberry jell-o.  I'm sure these taste good but I can't show up at an event with stuff that came out of the box.  I have a reputation to uphold.  Food snob, right here.

I made three different cakes today.  I did.  I promise....

Oh yeah - there are only two photos of ingredients over there.  I know.  Oddly enough recipes #2 and #3 have the exact same ingredients - different proportions and totally different results, but the list was the same so it made no sense to take two pictures.





I made all three recipes as standard cupcakes and also used frozen strawberries that I thawed, strained and pureed for each.  They all also used cake flour which I'm a big fan of because I think it makes cakes softer and more delicate.

Some of the differences...

Cake #1 has buttermilk, a combination of butter and oil, whole eggs, vanilla beans and almond extract and lemon zest in the batter.


To mix it up you cream the butter and sugar then add the eggs, then buttermilk, then dry ingredients, then strawberries.

Cake #2 has whole milk, vanilla extract and whole eggs.

To mix it up you combine all the dry ingredients with the butter, then add all the wet ingredients including the strawberries at the end.

Cake #3 has whole milk, vanilla extract and egg whites.

To mix it up you do the same thing as #2.

I really had no expectations for which of these cakes I would like better and I was surprised by how different they all were.

First, let's talk about appearance.  Cake #1 was DARK which is weird because the picture on the recipe was a normal color.   It looked more like a cabernet cupcake than a strawberry cupcake.  (Does that exist? - it should)  Cake #2 didn't rise very much so it was on the small side but it was a pretty light pink color.  Cake #3 was definitely the prettiest and we know that pretty matters in cupcakes.

Texture is up next.  #1 and #2 were both light, fluffy and tender.  #3 was much more dense and a little wet.  Not so good.

Most importantly - Taste!  #2 didn't taste that great - probably because of the texture issues noted above.  To be honest, I eliminated it in my mind as option the second I broke one open and saw the wet, dense center.  #1 and #3 both tasted really good but I felt like the almond extract and lemon zest in #1 distracted from the strawberry flavor.  The flavor in #3 was still pretty light in the strawberry department but that can easily be taken care of by the addition of strawberry frosting :)

Speaking of frosting, I didn't test multiple strawberry frosting recipes.  Weird, huh?  I'm still a little shocked myself.  In some ways frosting is pretty forgiving, particularly American buttercream.  You can always add more butter or powdered sugar or cream if you need to adjust the taste or texture so I took a risk and just made this one.  It was really good!

So, obviously the overall was favorite was Cake #3.  It was pretty and it tasted like strawberries which is really all you need in a strawberry cupcake.... besides frosting.

Here are the recipes....

Cake #1
Cake #2
Cake #3

Julie