This vegan strawberry cake is a dream! Topped with strawberry buttercream frosting and decorated with fresh strawberries it’s a strawberry lovers dream come true!
The strawberry flavor comes through perfectly and comes from strawberry purée and a little strawberry essence.
This cake is also a reader request, so please continue to request things, we want to make all the things that you want to see!
The strawberry purée and strawberry essence give the batter a lovely light pink color, however I found that it didn’t hold when baking.
So I added in a tablespoon of pink food coloring. You can omit this if you don’t mind about the color, but as you can see the result was a nice shade of pink that (mostly) held through the baking process.
The strawberry frosting is also flavored with strawberry purée and a little strawberry extract.
By the way it might be called strawberry essence where you are, or it might be called strawberry flavoring, it’s the same thing and will do the job perfectly.
And then of course you’re going to decorate with fresh strawberries, it’s a strawberry cake after all!
But just beware that strawberries can run a little, so put them on right before serving.
So if you love strawberries, then you are going to simply LOVE this vegan strawberry cake, it is:
- Moist
- Fluffy
- Packed with strawberry flavor
- Pink
- Pretty!
- Topped with strawberry buttercream frosting!
Keep it covered at room temperature where it will stay fresh for a few days or covered in the fridge where it will stay good for up to a week.
What do you think of this vegan strawberry cake? Let us know in the comments! And please rate the recipe if you make it as this is so helpful!
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Vegan Strawberry Cake with Strawberry Frosting
- Prep Time: 20 mins
- Cook Time: 30 mins
- Total Time: 50 minutes
- Yield: 10
Description
Light, fluffy and deliciously moist vegan strawberry cake with strawberry frosting. This pretty pink cake is packed with strawberry flavor and ideal for any kind of celebration!
Ingredients
For the Strawberry Cake:
- 2 cups (250g) + 3 Tbsp All Purpose Flour
- 1 cup (200g) White Sugar
- 1 tsp Baking Soda
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 1 cup (232g) Strawberry Purée*
- 2 tsp Strawberry Extract
- 1/3 cup (80ml) Extra Virgin Olive Oil (or other vegetable oil)
- 1 Tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar
- 1 Flax Egg
- 1 Tbsp Pink or Red Food Coloring (Optional)
For the Strawberry Frosting:
- 4 cups (480g) Powdered (Confectioners) Sugar
- 1/4 cup (56g) Vegan Butter
- 1/4 cup (60ml) Strawberry Purée*
- 1 tsp Strawberry Extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).
- Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the sugar, baking soda and salt.
- Prepare your flax egg by mixing 1 Tbsp of ground flaxseed meal with 3 Tbsp of Hot Water from the kettle. Allow to sit for a minute to become gloopy.
- Add the strawberry purée, strawberry extract, olive oil, vinegar, flax egg and food coloring and mix in. The batter will be very thick, too thick to whisk, so just use a spoon and mix as well as you can, being careful not to over-mix.
- Spray two 7-inch cake tins with non-stick spray, and place a circle of parchment paper at the base of each. Divide the batter evenly between them and place into the oven to bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of one of the cakes comes out clean.
- Transfer to a wire cooling rack to cool completely before frosting.
- Prepare your frosting by adding the powdered sugar, vegan butter, strawberry purée and strawberry extract into the bowl of an electric mixer. Starting at slow speed, gradually increase speed until thick and smooth. The frosting should be very thick, but still spreadable. Add more powdered sugar if it’s too thin and a little more strawberry purée if it ends up too thick.
- Frost the cakes when cooled and serve with fresh strawberries.
Notes
*Make your own strawberry purée by placing fresh strawberries (washed, with stems cut off) into the food processor and processing into a purée. In order to get enough purée for both the cake recipe and the frosting I used a whole 14oz (400g) pack of fresh whole strawberries. There was a bit left over from puréeing this amount, so you can also use a bit less, or you can just eat the bit that’s left over.
*Weigh your flour for the most accurate results as flour measures are the most tricky in baking.
- Category: Dessert, Cakes
- Method: Bake
- Cuisine: Vegan
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 Slice (of 10)
- Calories: 435
- Sugar: 69g
- Sodium: 282mg
- Fat: 10.3g
- Saturated Fat: 1.5g
- Carbohydrates: 85g
- Fiber: 1.5g
- Protein: 2.2g
Keywords: vegan strawberry cake
Hi Alison, can I replace the flax egg with a chia egg or can I just leave them out, like the vanilla cake?
You can use a chia egg. Don’t leave it out as it is accounted for in the ingredient balance of this recipe.
Hello do you happen to know how many cups of cake batter this recipe makes? I need six cups total for a project I’m working on
Hi Pamela, I have never measured it this way so I don’t know.
Hi Alison, Im planing on making this cake tonight. Can I replace the flax egg with Just Egg, which is a vegan egg substitute? Im very excited to make this for my daughters birthday!
Hi Barbara, yes that should be fine!
Is it possible to sub GF all purpose flour instead of regular?
Yes that should work fine.
Hi! I’m planning on making this cake tomorrow, but I don’t have any strawberry extract, any ideas on how to fix that? Thank you!
You can leave it off, the flavor will be reduced, but will still be there from the strawberry purée.
Hi,
Can I substitute the apple cider vinegar with something else, such as lemon juice etc? If yes, how much should I replace it with? Thks!
You can try lemon juice in the same quantity.
Hi Alison! Thank you so much for the amazing recipes. I am planning on making this cake this weekend. I absolutely love your vanilla cake and had a question– why in the vanilla cake is there no flax egg, but one is added to this recipe? I love the texture of your vanilla cake and want something similar for this one. Thanks so much!
Hi Jules, we discuss in the vanilla cake post why there is no flax egg, the flecks of flax show up in it and it doesn’t look good. The texture of this cake is very similar to the vanilla cake, just with strawberry flavor.
Will this work with frozen strawberries? Thank you!
Yes I think it would.
hello, can I substitute the flax egg for regular egg? I need a dairy and nut free cake
Sure!
Hi Allison! I made this today for father’s day and it was a huge hit! Thank you so much for your recipes
★★★★★
Wonderful! Thanks Alice!
The cake is great! Love the taste, and it baked really well at 22 min in 9” pans. The sweetness of the icing overpowers it though— I thought something was odd about 4 cups of powdered sugar for a small cake. Are all the measurements definitely correct for the icing?
Thanks!
★★★★
All measures are correct. You are welcome to adjust the frosting to your taste though.
Hello! I am planning to make this cake 1 day in advance and frost just before serving, would you recommend to leave the baked cake out in room temperature, freeze it or just chill in the non-freezer section? Also, I am planning to frost it with your Vanilla Frosting recipe! So if I were to prepare the frosting in advance as well, do I chill or freeze it? Any ideas if I need to use the electric mixer again after thawing? Thank you in advance!!
Hi Carina, is there a particular reason you don’t want to frost it? Because you could frost the cake and then cover it and refrigerate overnight and it will be perfect. Even if you don’t frost it, then cover both frosting and cake separately and refrigerate. As long as the cake is covered it won’t dry out. And then frost on the day. I wouldn’t freeze it as that is not needed for 1 day in advance.
As I’m not sure if the frosted cake will look different the next day haha! Thanks for your quick response, I just baked my cake and will frost like you said later! Do you think piping decorations will hold up until the next day?
It should do, if it’s frosted and then piped and stored in the fridge (covered) it should hold up great.
Is there a way I can substitute maple syrup (or other natural sweetener) for the sugar? I have a 9 month old who has to eat cake for a baked egg challenge (to determine if his egg allergy extends to baked goods) when he is a year old. I have to “train” him with an egg free cake (and he LOVES strawberries) that I can later add an egg in at the allergists office. He has had very limited sugar and eats strawberries like candy, so I think he would LOVE this cake.
Hi Julie, maple syrup won’t work well as a sub and neither would any liquid sweetener. You can reduce the sugar a little without any other changes to the recipe and see how you go with that.