Easy Vegan Strawberry Cake Recipe

Hello friends! It is finally strawberry season and I’m so happy about it. I love strawberries and when the season comes around, I always pop them like sweets! Usually, the strawbs are gone before I can do anything with them, so I’m amazed I made this strawberry cake recipe happen!

Strawberries lend themselves very well to any spring/summer recipe, and after eating them a lot in smoothies/sorbets, I thought a cake form would be a fun idea to try next! So I came up with this vegan strawberry cake combining various vegan cakes recipes I’ve seen and read about over the last few years and it’s come out really, really well.

Ingredients for this vegan strawberry cake

This strawberry cake is super easy to make – we are only using ingredients that you’d use in any traditional cake, minus eggs and dairy. Honestly, anyone can make it, it’s perfect for complete beginners. We’re using:

–Flour: plain, wheat flour

–Baking powder: essential for this recipe, do not skip this step!

–Sugar: any you’d like, I used golden caster sugar. I would advise against a denser sugar like dark brown sugar.

–Oil: I used vegetable oil for a neutral taste, but any other neutral oil would do the trick (sunflower, rapeseed…)

–Dairy free yogurt: I used the Oatly greek style oak yogurt which I can only recommend for baking, it makes your cake very light and fluffy! It also helps to bind all the ingredients together.

–Strawberries: the key ingredient here! Any strawbs will do but let’s try to keep it local with fresh, English strawberries! Frozen fruit will not work as well in this recipe.

Method for this Vegan Strawberry Cake

Once I’ve pre-heated my oven to 200°C, first off, we have to grease our tin. I used a spring form tin with 23cm in diameter, for ease really as I like how quickly I can get the cake out when it has baked in this type of tin. I used some plant based butter to grease the tin and some flour to prevent the cake from sticking.

We start by cleaning the strawberries, and the best way I’ve found is to put the strawberries whole in a large bowl, I sprinkle some baking soda on top and add 1/2 of white vinegar. The mixture will fizz, I fill up the rest of the bowl with water and leave to sit for 10-15 minutes. It helps get all the dirt out, and trust me when I say you’ve never cleaned fruit properly until your water turns a (lovely) brown-greyish colour!

For the cake mixture, we start by mixing the sugar and oat yogurt together in a large bowl, and then adding the oil. We whisk until combined.

In a separate, smaller dish, I combine the baking powder and 10 grams of the flour, give it a mix and put it aside for later.

I measure the rest of the flour and add it to the cake mix.

At this point the strawberries have been submerged for 10-15 minutes, so it’s time to get them out. I rinse them thoroughly with some cold water, then cut the hulls off (the green bit!) and then cut them in half. Set aside.

We now get to the most important part: adding the flour/baking powder mixture to the cake batter. We do this last, because we don’t want to baking powder to start working and leavening too soon while the cake is still in the bowl, otherwise we’ll find ourselves with a flat crepe instead of a cake!

The way to do it is easy: we add it in, and then whisk thoroughly until just combined, about 30 seconds to 1 minute. Once that’s done, we need to work quickly, otherwise the baking powder will leaven the cake in the bowl. At this point, the batter is very thick, it’s very normal, do not worry! Add a splash of milk to loosen if you feel it’s too stiff.

Transfer the cake batter in the tin. You may need to use a spatula to spread the batter in the tin, as it’s very thick. Arrange the strawberries on top of the batter. I have found a really good technique to avoid fresh fruit sinking to the bottom of the cake during baking – coat them in a thin layer of flour before pushing them down, and they stay where they are during baking! Genius!

Bake the cake for 30 to 35 minutes, until golden. The blade of a knife needs to come out clean when you insert it in the centre to check.

And voilà! The recipe to the best vegan strawberry cake!

If you’re enjoying this post, you may also like… Vegan Raspberry Muffins Recipe

Easy, Vegan Strawberry Cake

Yield: 8

Print

Ingredients

• 175g sugar (I used golden caster sugar)
• 220g plant based yogurt
• 140ml vegetable oil
• 250g flour
• 20g baking powder
• 400g strawberries

Instructions

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200°C.
2. Clean your strawberries. In a large bowl, put the strawberries, sprinkle some baking soda on top and add 1/2 of white vinegar. Add water to the mixture until it reaches the top. Leave to soak for 10-15 minutes.
3. Grease a spring form tin of 23cm using some plant based butter and add a sprinkle of flour.
4. In a small dish, mix together the baking powder and 10g of the flour. Set aside.
5. Whisk together the sugar and plant based yogurt until combined.
6. Add the oil, whisk again until well combined.
7. Add 240g of flour (what is left after step 3) to the sugar/yogurt/oil mixture, and whish until all the flour is incorporated.
8. Drain and rinse your strawberries. Cut the hulls (green bits!) off the top, and then halve each strawberry.
9. To finish the cake batter, add the small dish of flour/baking powder combination and whisk in the batter until just combined. Transfer the batter in the greased tin, using a spatula to spread the batter.
10. Add in your strawberries. To avoid them sinking at the bottom, coat lightly in flour before putting them in.
11. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes. The cake should be golden brown and the blade of a knife needs to come out clean when you insert it in the middle to check.
12. Leave to cool before removing from the tin.

Let me know if you decide to make this vegan strawberry cake, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Em ♥