Strawberry Lemon Cake with Buttercream Frosting

5 from 8 votes

Strawberry Lemon Cake with Buttercream Frosting

This moist Strawberry Lemon Cake is the perfect springtime & Easter dessert! A tart lemon cake filled with sweet strawberries, creamy lemon filling, and covered with a flavorful strawberry buttercream.

Prep Time20

Cook Time30

Assembly20

Total Time1 10

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Servings: servings

Calories: 487kcal

Author: Linda Warren

Ingredients

Strawberry Lemon Cake

¾ cup Unsalted butter softened
1 ½ cups sugar
3 eggs
2 ½ cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cups buttermilk
¼ cup lemon juice
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon lemon extract
1 to 2 Tablespoons lemon zest
1 cup fresh strawberries diced
1 Tablespoon all-purpose flour
Garnishes: sprinkles lemon slices, strawberry halves, Easter candy

Lemon Cream Filling (from a recipe by Through Her Looking Glass)

½ cup heavy whipping cream
½ cup prepared lemon curd

Strawberry Buttercream Frosting

¾ cup Unsalted butter room temperature
1 cup freeze-dried strawberries pulverized
2 ½ Tablespoons heavy cream
2 cups powdered sugar

Instructions

Strawberry Lemon Cake

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter 2 8” cake pans. Line bottom of each with parchment paper. Butter parchment paper and then dust entire pan with flour.
Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, for 5 minutes.
Beat in eggs, one at a time.
In a large bowl, combine cake flour, baking powder and salt.
In a large measuring cup, combine buttermilk, lemon juice and extracts. Stir.
Using a whisk to mix, add dry ingredients to creamed mixture alternately with the buttermilk, starting and ending with dry ingredients. Mix until just blended.
Toss diced strawberries with 1 tablespoon flour.
Fold strawberries and lemon zest into batter.
Divide batter between cake pans and bake in preheated oven for 30-35 minutes or until toothpick in center comes out clean.
Let cool in cake pans for 10 minutes then gently turn out onto wire racks to cool completely.

Lemon Cream

Make just before assembling cake.
In a clean bowl, beat whipping cream until soft peaks form.
Fold in lemon curd.

Strawberry Buttercream Frosting

Beat butter for 4-5 minutes until light and fluffy.
Place freeze-dried strawberries in a chopper or blender and pulverize to a powder. You should have about ½ cup.
Add freeze-dried strawberries, heavy cream and powdered sugar to butter and beat another 3-4 minutes.

To assemble:

Place one of the cooled cake rounds on a platter or cake stand.
Smooth some of the lemon cream over top. Make sure to leave about ½” around outside edge clean so as not to interfere when frosting the cake.
Place second cake round on top of lemon cream.
Smooth frosting around outside then cover top.
Decorate as desired for Easter or spring. I used sprinkles around sides and lemon slices, strawberry halves and candy Easter eggs on top.

Notes

Tips

To make the cake lighter and fluffier, cream the butter and sugar together for at least 5 minutes. This incorporates air into the mixture to give the cake more structure.
When mixing dry ingredients into creamed mixture, always start and end with the dry ingredients. The addition of the dry ingredients first will help prevent the batter from curdling. This might happen if the colder wet ingredients are added first. It also coats the flour with fat preventing gluten from developing. This will make the resulting cake more tender.
When alternating dry and wet ingredients, whisk or fold them into the creamed mixture. This will prevent overmixing which would incorporate more air into the batter. If your cakes tend to collapse in the center, overmixing is often the culprit.

Nutrition