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This cheery Strawberry Dream Cake is a delicious, fluffy and luscious strawberry cake using a shortcut vanilla cake mix, with the addition of strawberries exploding with flavor in the cake as well as the frosting!

More traditional cakes include our Super-Moist Vanilla with Cake Vanilla Buttercream, Ultimate Carrot Cake, Retro Red Velvet Cake and our Super-Moist Chocolate Cake!

This is a super easy way to make a strawberry cake, frosted with a sweet strawberry and cream cheese buttercream frosting using freeze-dried strawberries and freshly, pureed strawberries. It’s so incredible!

The best part is tasting the yummy, amazing strawberry flavor that is definitely going on with each lovely bite with this easy strawberry cake recipe!

This strawberry cake is so fruity with a real, natural strawberry vibe going on in the cake and the frosting and it’s irresistibly delicious! It’s hard to stop with one piece of this cake with strawberries, let alone one bite!

Ways To Use Strawberry In the Cake & Frosting, with Options

Freeze Dried Strawberries

We added these to our frosting! OH MY! Have you tried freeze-dried strawberry powder? I love it! So, here’s the scoop! Strawberry powder is an excellent source of vitamin C, antioxidants, and dietary fiber and is made from freeze-dried strawberries.

Strawberry powder retains all of the protective nutrients of real strawberries. So, besides adding it to our frosting, try mixing in 1-2 tablespoons of the powder into any drink, smoothie, yogurt, or other desserts for a natural strawberry flavor! Plus, it’s awesome to use all year round, right? The strawberries won’t go bad!

If you can’t find the strawberry powder, you can also buy whole freeze-dried strawberries. Just add them to your food processor and pulse them a few times to make your strawberry powder.

Add 1/2 cup freeze-dried strawberry powder to add in frosting alone or combine with pureed strawberries for a double boost of strawberry flavor in the frosting!

Strawberry Puree

I made a simple strawberry puree quickly just by quartering strawberries.

Add 1 cup fresh or frozen strawberries to blender and blend until smooth to add in frosting alone or combine with freeze-dried strawberry powder!

Fresh Strawberries

In the cake, we added diced, smashed strawberries to the batter, to give it more strawberry flavor. Easy to do and well worth it!

Can also add whole strawberries to decorate on top of cake!

Strawberry Jello

I’m using 3 ounces of Strawberry Jello in the cake to transform it to a strawberry cake. That’s also when I added in some fresh strawberries that I basically just chopped up and then smashed them up a bit to bring out more strawberry flavor!

Ingredients You Need for Strawberry Cake Recipe

You’ll love this take on strawberry cake recipe using cake mix!

1 oz box white cake mix (regular size)
canola or vegetable oil
eggs, room temperature
milk of choice
strawberry gelatin
finely chopped strawberries or smashed up strawberries

3 Ways to Make Strawberry Frosting Recipe Ingredients

3 Ways to Make it! You can use freeze-dried strawberry powder or puree quartered fresh or frozen strawberries. To puree, just add fresh/frozen strawberries in the blender and blend until smooth. Or you can use a combination of both strawberry powder and pureed strawberries. Cool!
unsalted butter, room temperature
powdered sugar
heavy cream or whole milk, add more if needed
pure vanilla extract
salt
For more Pink color in the frosting, consider adding 2-3 drops red or pink gel food coloring if you want!

Add Cream Cheese to Strawberry Frosting Recipe for Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting

Optional: Add 8 ounces of softened cream cheese, to your frosting. Make sure it’s completely softened, so you don’t have lumps by beating it before adding it to your frosting at the end or you can add it when you are beating the butter.

How to Make the Dreamy Strawberry Cake

Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly spray 2 8×8 baking pans with non-stick spray or Baker’s Joy.
Using a mixer, mix together the cake mix, eggs, milk, and vegetable oil well. Mix in the 1 cup of mashed strawberries and the (dry) strawberry gelatin.
Mix 3 minutes, stopping to scrape the sides of the bowl a couple of times.
Divide the batter evenly among layer pans or pour into two 8-inch pans for 30-33 minutes.
Cool the cake layers for 10 minutes in the pan before removing them to a wire rack. Wait until the cake is completely cool before frosting.

For two 9-inch pan bake 28-31 minutes.
three 8-inch pans bake for 28-30 minutes.
For 9×13 pan bake 28 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Strawberry Frosting

Using mixer beat the butter on medium-high speed until creamy, about 2 minutes. Add powdered sugar, strawberry powder or pureed strawberries/or combo of both, heavy cream/milk, and vanilla. Beat on low speed for 30 seconds, then switch to high speed and beat for 2 minutes.
Add 1-3 more tablespoons of heavy cream/milk if needed to thin out, if desired.

How to Make Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting

If you want strawberry cream cheese frosting, mix in 8 ounces of softened cream cheese (mix before adding to make sure it’s soft, without lumps) to frosting mixture at the end. You can also add it in, after you have mixed the butter.

Storing Strawberry Cake

Cover cake at room temperature up to 5 days and in the refrigerator up to 1 week. just remember to bring a refrigerated cake out 30 minutes to an hour before serving, and let sit at room temperature.
To Make Ahead, just prepare cakes and frosting up to 1 day in advance. Cover the cakes tightly and keep at room temperature or in the refrigerator until ready to assemble.

When you’re looking to make the easiest and best strawberry cake, look no further! This strawberry cake recipe is the only one you’ll ever need to make your strawberry lovers perfectly happy! Strawberry cake using cake mix is a happy shortcut!

Let’s bake and frost! You may enjoy this Super Easy Chocolate Cake Recipe with Chocolate Frosting too!

More Strawberry Dreaming Desserts!