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Slice of strawberry cake on a cake lifter.
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4.90 from 68 votes

Vegan Strawberry Cake

This pretty pink vegan strawberry cake is light and fluffy and topped with a gorgeous vegan strawberry buttercream frosting.
Prep Time20 minutes
Cook Time20 minutes
Total Time40 minutes
Course: Cakes, Dessert
Cuisine: American
Diet: Vegan
Servings: 10
Calories: 544kcal
Author: Alison Andrews

Ingredients

Strawberry Cake:

Strawberry Buttercream Frosting:

  • 4 cups Powdered Sugar (480g)
  • ½ cup Vegan Butter (112g)
  • 2-3 Tbsp Strawberry Purée
  • 1 tsp Strawberry Extract

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Spray three 6-inch cake pans with non-stick spray and line the bottoms with circles of parchment paper. Set aside. 
  • Prepare your strawberry purée by adding fresh strawberries (washed, stems cut off) to your food processor and puréeing until smooth. In order to get enough purée for both the cake recipe and the frosting use 10.5 ounces (300g) fresh whole strawberries. 
  • Sift the all purpose flour into a mixing bowl and add white granulated sugar, baking soda and salt. Mix together. 
  • Add strawberry purée, oil, vinegar, strawberry extract and red gel food coloring to the mixing bowl and mix into a batter. Don't overmix. 
  • Divide the batter evenly between the three prepared 6-inch cake pans and smooth down. 
  • Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of one of the cakes comes out clean. 
  • Let the cakes cool for a few minutes before removing them from the cake pans and placing them on a wire cooling rack to cool completely. 
  • Add the powdered sugar, vegan butter, 2 tablespoons of strawberry purée and strawberry extract to the bowl of your stand mixer and starting at slow speed, gradually increase speed until your frosting is thick and smooth. If it's too thick, add more strawberry purée. 
  • When the cakes are cooled, frost with the strawberry buttercream frosting. 
  • When the cake is frosted, it's ideal to let the frosted cake set in the fridge for one hour before serving. 

Notes

  1. Measure the flour correctly. Either use the spoon and level method: spoon the flour into your measuring cup and then level off the top with a knife, don't scoop it and don't pack it into the cup, or weigh it out on a food scale for complete accuracy. 
  2. Strawberry extract - may also be called strawberry essence or strawberry flavoring, it's the same thing and will do the job perfectly. If you can't get hold of it, then you can replace it with vanilla extract. The strawberry purée will still provide plenty of strawberry flavor. 
  3. Red gel food color - The strawberry purée and strawberry extract on their own give the batter a lovely light pink color, but we found that it didn't hold when baking. So we added in a little red gel food coloring to get the beautiful pink color. You can omit this if you don't mind about the color, but as you can see the result of using the red gel food color is a nice shade of pink that holds up well through the baking process.Don't over-mix the batter. Mix the batter until it's just mixed and then stop mixing. If you over-mix the batter it will affect the texture and rise. 
  4. Adapt for different cake pans. This cake adapts to different size cake pans as follows:
    • Three 6-inch round cake pans - bake for 20 minutes.
    • Two 7-inch round cake pans - bake for 25 minutes.
    • Two 8-inch round cake pans - bake for 20 minutes (note that the cake layers are quite thin).
    • One 9-inch round cake pan - bake for 30 minutes.
    • One 9x9 square cake pan - bake for 25 minutes.
  5. Make It Gluten-Free: If you'd like to make this cake gluten-free then use a gluten-free all purpose flour blend in the same quantity as the regular flour. 
  6. Storing and Freezing: Keep the cake covered at room temperature where it will stay fresh for 2-3 days or covered in the fridge where it will stay good for up to a week. It's also is freezer friendly for up to 3 months.
  7. This recipe was first published in January 2018. It has been updated with new photos and the recipe itself has been slightly updated and simplified. 

Nutrition

Serving: 1Slice | Calories: 544kcal | Carbohydrates: 89.4g | Protein: 2.7g | Fat: 20g | Saturated Fat: 3.2g | Sodium: 329mg | Fiber: 1.3g | Sugar: 68.6g