A perfect strawberry dessert doesn’t exis—wait! I won’t let you complete this sentence because I have brought you the most amazing strawberry dessert! It’s the delicious Strawberry Crunch Cake!! Sounds interesting, no?
Inspired by a famous strawberry crunch ice cream, this cake has all the elements you will love in a dessert. A cake that has soft vanilla and strawberry sponge, a strawberry reduction, yummy strawberry crunch and smooth white chocolate buttercream. Yes, you get all these different elements together in one cake.
I absolutely love strawberries, and what better way to incorporate them into a cake? Three different elements with unique textures, yet all have strawberry flavour incorporated in them. The cake is something new for Indians as this is more famous in the West. I’m sure this cake will be a hit amongst your friends and family as it’s just an out-of-the-world kind of cake!!
Strawberry Crunch Cake Recipe Video Tutorial
Why You’ll Love This Recipe?
The uniqueness of the cake itself is enough to fall in love with it. But really I can give you too many reasons to not just try it but add it to your favourites.
- Texture: The cake has an amalgamation of so many different textures from its elements. The softness from the sponge, tanginess from strawberry reduction, silky and velvety texture from white chocolate buttercream and an enormous amount of crunchiness from the strawberry crunch- together, all these elements complement each other really well.
- Flavour: It’s all about the strawberries. As a baker, I feel using strawberry essence for a strawberry cake is the most boring thing to do. Why not use the actual strawberries when you can? The freshness from using fresh strawberries can’t compete with any essence.
- New and Unique: the concept of the cake altogether is unique as it basically tries to replicate the famous strawberry crunch ice cream bar. As Indians, we are not familiar with the ice cream, but the cake’s elements sound refreshingly new.
Important Ingredients Used In The Recipe
- Fresh/frozen Strawberries: If available in the season, prefer using fresh strawberries to get the best authentic flavour. But if you want to make this cake in a non-strawberry season, you can use frozen strawberries.
- Shortbread cookies: For making the crunch, shortbread cookies are required. They can be store-bought or homemade. Simple vanilla shortbread cookies work the best to provide a ni e crunch when they are crushed.
- Egg whites: I have used separated eggs while making the vanilla and strawberry sponge. Beating the egg whites creates a lot of foam ((aeration) in the meringue. The meringue, when folded into the cake batter, helps make the cake extraordinarily soft and fluffy.
- Cream of tartar: while beating egg whites, we need to add cream of tartar so that the meringue is formed nicely and has the stability to hold all the air.
How To Make Strawberry Crunch Cake
The process for the cake includes four elements which we will make one by one.
Method for strawberry reduction
- Cook Strawberries: in a saucepan, take fresh or frozen strawberries, castor sugar, lemon juice and salt. Mix and cook them on medium heat until the mixture comes down to 250g(or almost half)
- Blend: Once the reduction has occurred, stop cooking and blend it with a hand blender to have a smooth mixture.
Method for strawberry crunch
- Grind: In a mixer grinder jar, take frozen, dried strawberries and shortbread cookies. Grind them roughly to crush them.
- Add butter: Transfer the mixture to a bowl and add melted butter to it. Mix using fingertips until you get a crumble-like texture.
Method for Strawberry and Vanilla Sponge
- Preparation: Preheat the oven to 180C (OTG mode: upper rod + lower rod + fan). Grease and line two 6-inch round tins with oil and butter paper.
- Egg yolk: Mix egg yolks, salt and vanilla essence in a bowl and keep aside.
- Meringue: In a new bowl, beat egg whites with cream of tartar using a hand beater. Make meringue with soft peaks.
- Wet Ingredients: combine milk, oil, strawberry reduction and one drop of red gel colour in a separate bowl. (skip strawberry reduction and red colour when making the vanilla sponge, only mix milk with oil)
- Egg yolks and whites: Mix the egg yolk mixture into the meringue and beat using a hand beater.
- Add wet Ingredients: Add in the wet ingredients mixture and mix using the cut-and-fold method.
- Dry Ingredients: Using the cut and fold method again, mix sifted all-purpose flour.
- Bake: Transfer the batters to the prepared tins and bake at 180C (OTG Mode: lower rod only) for 30-35 minutes.
Method for white chocolate buttercream
I have posted my white chocolate buttercream recipe earlier. Check out the tutorial here.
White Chocolate Buttercream: Prepare 3 times the recipe I gave in the post for this cake’s recipe. You can also check the recipe card below for the quantities.
Method for Assembly:
- Demould the sponges and divide them into two parts with a cake leveller.
- Pipe some buttercream on a cake base and spread it, then place a vanilla sponge. Soak it with simple vanilla soaking syrup.
- Pipe the buttercream over the sponge and smooth it out using a palette knife and pipe the buttercream at the edge to give a border; now, pipe strawberry reduction at the centre and smooth it out.
- Place a strawberry sponge and repeat the same process as before.
- Now pipe a thin layer of buttercream on top and side of the cake to crumb coat it. Then smooth it out. Keep it in the freezer for 15 minutes.
- Now pipe thick layers of buttercream all over the top and the sides of the cake to give it a final coating. Remove the excess with a metal scrapper.
- Garnish/Decoration: Now, we will stick strawberry crunch on the bottom sides of the cake and remove the excess with a pastry brush. Place a cookie cutter at the top and sprinkle strawberry crunch inside the cookie cutter. Pipe dollops of buttercream at the top edge of the cake using a 1M nozzle and place fresh strawberries on each dollop.
Chef’s Tips For The Recipe
Tip for Cake Sponge
Carefully handle the batter when mixing meringue with other ingredients. Do not mix vigorously, as the air you incorporated in the meringue will deflate. Since we are not adding any rising agent, meringue is the only ingredient that will give rise to the sponge.
Tip For Assembly
Stack and assemble the cake as neatly as possible. the inside layers should be visible clearly when a slice is cut.
How To Store Strawberry Crunch Cake
The assembled cake should be stored in the refrigerator and consumed within three days.
You can store extra buttercream in an airtight box and use it within the same week.
The strawberry reduction can be stored in a glass jar in the refrigerator. It can be used for up to a week.
More Easy Recipes
Do not miss the chance to make my other trending cake recipes.
