5-Ingredient Strawberry Cake

5-ingredient Strawberry Cake is soft and dense and smells like a strawberry patch. Filled with puréed and whole strawberries, it has no oil, no butter, and no dairy. So easy and delicious!

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There’s a recipe that every Russian person knows. Well, ok, maybe every is an exaggeration but not by much. It’s traditionally called Sharlotka or as I call it Quick and Easy Cake.

That cake has about 3-4 ingredients and the proportions depend very much on who is making it. It is filled with all kind of fruits and berries from fresh to frozen. And it’s delicious!

This 5-ingredient Strawberry Cake is a variation of that traditional Quick and Easy Cake. The technique is slightly different so the texture isn’t as fluffy but it is still immensely delicious and super easy to make.

This Strawberry Cake has a whole pound of strawberries! Half of the strawberries are blended into a sauce and mixed into the batter and half of the strawberries are left whole. The Strawberry Cake is soft and dense. It smells like strawberries and it is filled with whole soft and jammy berries. It is perfect for breakfast or a snack. 

This Strawberry Cake recipe is also without any oil or butter or dairy, thus making it perfect for many different diets and allergies.

Ingredients to make Strawberry Cake

There are only 5 ingredients in this Strawberry Cake recipe.

1. Strawberries
2. Eggs
3. Sugar
4. Flour
5. Baking powder 

You read it right, there’s no oil or butter or any other fat in this recipe! Also, no dairy or equivalent! So, easy and delicious and you most likely already have all the ingredients!

How to make 5-ingredient Strawberry Cake

There’s a reason why the original variation of this cake is so popular in Russia – it’s super easy! I updated the recipe with an extra step but it is still not much more difficult.

1. Process half of the strawberries in a food processor until they are almost fully smooth. This will make about 1 cup of luscious strawberry sauce.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, and the strawberry sauce just until combined. No need to whip it to double.
3. Add the flour and baking powder and mix well just until the flour is incorporated. You can use either a spatula or a mixer. Just do not overmix.
4. Optional step: add a few drops of pink/red food colouring if you’d like your Strawberry Cake to be pink. Strawberry Sauce itself will not make the cake pink.
5. Pour the cake into a buttered and floured 7-inch pan.
6. Add whole strawberries to the cake batter.
7. Bake, cool, and enjoy!

Texture of Strawberry Cake

Original Quick and Easy Cake is quite fluffy even without any addition of baking powder. Texture for this particular 5-ingredient Strawberry Cake is quite different though.

Addition of a whole cup puréed strawberries and lack of any butter or oil make the batter quite heavy and wet, so the resulting cake is very soft but also dense. Whole strawberries are also juicy, so the area around the berries will look moist.

This cake is a bit similar to a bread in texture or even pancakes. It is really delicious and it smells and tastes like strawberries but I want to point out that the texture might not be what most people expect when they hear the word cake.

Tips for making Strawberry Cake

• Food colouring
  • I made this cake a few times before I finally decided to add food colouring to the batter.
  • My daughter kept asking for pink cake, so that’s why I added puréed strawberries to the cake originally. I tried super smooth purée and chunkier purée and experimented with the amount of strawberries but the resulting cake always turned out pretty grey, not even white.
  • So, I decided that I’ll try to add some food colouring. I don’t have any issues with adding food colouring on rare occasions. 
• Cake pan size
  • I’ve tried making this cake in an 8-inch cake pan and 7-inch cake pan.
  • Both sizes work and I suspect that even 9-inch pan would work although you might need to reduce baking time slightly.
  • I prefer 7-inch cake pan for this recipe as it makes the cake tall.

• Baking powder
  • Whenever I make Quick and Easy Cake, I usually do not add any leavening ingredients.
  • In this recipe I decided to add a bit of baking powder because of the extra cup of strawberry sauce that I added to the batter.
  • If you decide to omit baking powder, please let me know how the cake turns out.
• Sugar
  • • One of the reason for adding a whole cup of puréed strawberries to the batter was because I wanted to reduce the amount of sugar used, as I was making this cake for my toddler.
    • I started by using 3/4 cup of sugar and I found it too sweet for my taste, so I reduced the sugar further to only 1/2 cup.
    • If you have a sweet tooth and like sweeter desserts, then by all means use 3/4 cup sugar or even 1 cup sugar but it was definitely way too sweet for me.

• Flour
  • I’ve talked about this many times in my other recipes but I’ll say it again here. Whenever I measure and then weigh my flour I always get 1 cup flour = 150 g, not what most other books/links will tell you. 
• Strawberries
  • I love that this Strawberry Cake has a whole pound of strawberries in it!
  • I wanted to use as much strawberries as possible and putting a pound of whole or even chopped strawberries would be too much for the cake so that’s another reason why I puréed the strawberries and added them to the batter.

How to store 5-ingredient Strawberry Cake

I usually leave this cake on the counter for the first 24 hours, sometimes even 36 hours. Afterwards, if there’s any cake left, I store it in the fridge. Either an airtight container or just loose cover will work.

It is delicious cold right from the fridge but it’s better if it’s heated up just a little bit.

More strawberry recipes

• Strawberry Chia Jam Recipe (Instant Pot)
• Easy 3-ingredient Cake Roll with Strawberry Jam (I use a similar cake batter for this Cake Roll)
• Strawberry Rhubarb Bars Recipe
• Strawberry Cookies
• Strawberry Muffins
• Strawberry Meringue Cake