Roasted Strawberry Bundt Cake – Strawberries are roasted before adding to the cake batter in order to concentrate their flavor and remove the excess liquid, that we then use to make a strawberry icing to drizzle over the roasted strawberry cake.
Berry season is in full swing! We certainly have been indulging in our fair share of berries in the last month. This past week, we bought four pounds of strawberries that we ate in less than 5 days! Granted, two of those pounds were used in today’s recipe, but still! That’s a lot of berries for a family of four!
To take full advantage of berry season, I wanted to make sure to have plenty of new recipes ready for you all to try. Today’s recipe does exactly that. It’s a recipe for Roasted Strawberry Bundt Cake and it’s just lovely. I wanted a recipe for strawberry cake that used the strawberry’s natural flavor and didn’t have an artificial pink color.
When I saw this recipe for Roasted Strawberry Bundt Cake on Instagram, I was immediately intrigued. I knew that roasting berries was a great way to get all the flavor out of them without all the moisture. Plus, the cake had a gorgeous pink icing over the top that just looked so delicious that I had to try it.
After testing this recipe out, I can whole-heartedly say that this cake is one of the best Bundt cakes I’ve ever had and definitely the best cake I’ve had in the last year. The flavor is powerful, the texture is incredibly moist, and the the balance of sweetness is perfect. My husband also agrees. He couldn’t stop raving about it. He also couldn’t stop moaning as he ate it. Bite after bite he just delighted in the cake. I knew I had a winner on my hands.
Before we get into the recipe, let’s take a look at the cake!
I’m not gonna lie to you – making this cake has a few steps. It definitely took me most of the morning to make the cake from start to finish. This is because we roast the berries ourselves and need to let them cool before adding to the batter.
But trust me when I say – all the effort is more than worth it. This cake is incredible and nothing like anything you’ve had before. It’s definitely not your grandma’s strawberry cake!
How is this cake made
There are a few main steps to making this cake:
- Roasting the strawberries
- Making the cake
- Soaking the cake in strawberry syrup
- Topping the cake with strawberry glaze
Roasting the strawberries
Roasting the strawberries is very simple. You just add sugar to fresh berries and bake in the oven to release all their juice. This ensures that the cake batter doesn’t get too wet. If it does, the cake will be too delicate for all the strawberries and the strawberries won’t be evenly dispersed throughout the cake and will sink to the button.
Once the berries are done, they’re removed to drain and cool and the juice is collected to be used for the syrup and glaze later in the recipe
Making the cake
Once the berries have cooled, we chop them and set them aside until the cake batter is made.
To make the batter, it’s similar to any cake you’ve ever made. The main difference here is that we are adding almond extract, in addition to vanilla extract and also using mascarpone cheese instead of milk or sour cream. The mascarpone cheese adds moisture but also density to keep this cake super thick.
After the batter is made, the chopped strawberries get folded in and then the batter gets spread into the greased pan.
The cake is baked for 50 minutes and the removed from the oven to cool while we prepare the strawberry syrup.
Brushing on the strawberry syrup
The leftover juice from the roasted strawberries is used to make a syrup that is spread on the baked cake to further enhance the strawberry flavor.
To make the syrup, sugar and water are heated together and then the leftover juice is added. That’s it! It’s then spread on to the cake with a pastry brush, making sure to get it all of the cake
Topping with strawberry glaze
After the cake is completely cooled, it’s topped with strawberry glaze made from the last of the reserved strawberry juice, powdered sugar, and a little butter. It’s a thick glaze that doesn’t thin out when it’s spread on the cake. This ensures that it keeps it’s bright pink color.
Tips & Tricks
- It’s so important to drain the strawberries of their excess juices because, otherwise, the cake chemistry will be all thrown off. It’s a pretty dense cake because of the thick batter. However, that will change if the strawberries are too wet.
- I used a traditional 10-cup Bundt pan for this recipe, however, you can use whichever style you want. Just know that the thicker the cake becomes, the longer it will take to bake.
- Do not attempt to glaze the cake until the cake is completely cool. Otherwise, the glaze will melt off the cake.
Roasted Strawberry Bundt Cake
Ingredients
For roasted strawberries:
- 2 pounds strawberries hulled and halved
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- ¼ teaspoon salt
For strawberry cake:
- ¾ cup butter unsalted, softened
- 1½ cup granulated sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon almond extract
- 2½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- ⅔ cup mascarpone cheese room temperature
- roasted strawberries (from above)
- 1 tablespoon water
For strawberry syrup:
- ¼ cup water
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- ¼ cup reserved strawberry juice (from roasted strawberries)
For strawberry icing:
- 1½ cups powdered sugar
- 3 tablespoons reserved strawberry juice (from roasted strawberries)
- 1 tablespoon butter melted, unsalted
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Instructions
For roasting the strawberries:
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place strawberries, ¼ cup sugar, and ¼ teaspoon salt in a 13×9 pan and stir together. Spread into one even layer. Place in preheated oven to roast for 15 minutes. Remove from oven, stir, spread out again, and roast for 15 more minutes.
- Remove strawberries from oven. Reduce oven to 350 degrees. Place a sheet of parchment paper on a baking sheet. Using a slotted spoon, remove strawberries onto parchment paper. Spread the strawberries out to cool. Pour the leftover juice into a measuring cup to use later.
- Once the strawberries are cooled, chop the strawberries into small pieces. Save for later.
For the cake:
- Beat ¾ cup of butter and 1½ cups of sugar in a large bowl of a stand mixer using a paddle attachment until fluffy, about 4 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat for a few more seconds. Add in extract and beat until combined.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Place mascarpone in a small bowl with 1 tablespoon of water and whisk together. Add 1/3 of flour mixture to batter in stand mixer and beat until combined. And 1/2 mascarpone mixture and beat until combined. Add another 1/3 of flour mixture and mix until combined. Add last 1/2 of mascarpone to mixture and combine. Finally, finish by adding in the last of the flour mixture and beat until combined, but don't overmix!
- Drain roasted strawberries to remove excess juice. Add strawberries to batter and fold together with a rubber spatula. Spray nonstick spray into bundt cake pan. Pour batter into cake pan and spread evenly through the pan. Bake in preheated oven until toothpick comes out clean when inserted, about 45 minutes- 1 hour, depending on the kind of bundt pan. If the top starts to brown before it's done, cover top with foil and continue to bake.
- Remove from oven and let the cake cool for 10 minutes. In the meantime, make the syrup by adding the water and sugar to a small saucepan until the water starts to boil. Turn the heat off and let it cool for 5 minutes. Add in ¼ cup of the reserved strawberry juice and whisk together.
- After 10 minutes, turn the cake over onto a wire rack over a baking sheet. Using a brush, spread the strawberry syrup all over the cake. Let the cake cool completely before adding the glaze.
- Once the cake is cooled, make the strawberry glaze. Place powdered sugar, melted butter, salt, and 3 tablespoons of reserved strawberry juice into a medium bowl. Whisk them together until smooth. It will be really thick but should be smooth. If not, add a smidge of water at a time until smooth.
- Pour the glaze over the cake until it's all coated. Let it harden and then transfer to a cake plate. Cut and serve!
Notes
Pin for later:
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Strawberry Bundt is usually delicious! This is a type of cake with a distinctive shape, typically made from flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and fresh strawberries.
This recipe is so good! Every time I’ve made escape road it, I couldn’t wait to make it again!
So delicious! I haven’t had a bundt cake of any kind since I was a kid. Time to dust off this pan!
Oh my goodness! This looks so delicious and very yummy! I’m so excited to make this for the weekend!
I am so sad that I had to give away my bundt pan when I moved to the US!! I am thinking of buying another one soon specifically to make this because it looks amazing!!
This cake is definitely worth the effort! Roasting the strawberries is such a genius method and I plan on trying it for muffins too. Thanks for the recipe!
What a great idea to use strawberries roasted wow I can smell the goodness from here!
Roasting the strawberries brought such amazing flavor to this bundt cake!! It’s so perfect for summer – we will definitely be making this again soon!
I can have anything with strawberries and this recipe looks so delicious!
Yum I bet the roasting adds a nice layer of flavor to those strawberries for the cake to give added richness. Such a great idea.
This looks amazing! We cannot wait to go to strawberry picking this month. Roasting the strawberries sounds sogood, I would just eat them out of the oven!!!!
Oh my goodness, even laid out on the tray it looks magnificent. And definitely worth the extra effort. Perfection!