This easy homemade strawberry cake with strawberry frosting is absolutely delicious and refreshing while being vegan, gluten free, and refined sugar free! Perfect for a spring or summer’s day!
There is nothing quite like a refreshing homemade strawberry cake from scratch. This recipe in particular just blows me away! It’s vegan, gluten free, and nut free with a frosting that doesn’t contain any cane sugar, and yet it reminds me of a light summer’s day 🙂
Get ready for the best tasting strawberry cake of your life!
Why I love this vegan Strawberry Cake:
This homemade strawberry cake truly takes the cake, and I truly mean that. It’s light, fluffy, refreshing, and as sweet as a strawberry 🙂
All naturally!
What I really love about this gluten free strawberry cake is that it’s nut free. I personally am not nut free, but a few of my friends are, and so it makes me so happy when I can make a recipe that they can eat! Of course, I eat all types of food, I don’t follow a label, but I really respect that people struggle with allergies, and so when people come to my blog, I want to make sure that there’s something for everyone 🙂
I’m also low key OBSESSED with this vegan strawberry buttercream frosting! It is completely cane sugar free, which I’m not sure how I quite accomplished that, but I did and I’m sharing it with you! I have a few secrets up my sleeve that I’ll divulge so make sure to keep on reading 😉
The Secret Ingredient:
Yes, I am Mr. Krabs, and I have the secret formula to the best homemade strawberry cake that you have ever tasted! Ha! Spongebob Squarepants jokes haha!
But truly, the secret ingredient to making this homemade strawberry cake out of this world is all in the strawberries. Specifically, the strawberry jam, and I’m going to show you how to easily make your jam for your vegan strawberry cake!
First, rinse your strawberries and add them to a medium sauce pan with a little water (directions listed in the recipe card). Bring the pot to a boil and then reduce and cover for a few minutes. This cooks your strawberries so that they’re soft and extra sweet!
Then move the cooked strawberries to a blender or food processor and puree until smooth. You can either keep your jam at room temperature or refrigerate it, but either way, you now have a perfectly sweet jam!
Now let’s get into the rest of the ingredients 🙂
Homemade Strawberry Cake Ingredients:
Sweet Potato: my favorite ingredient of all time haha! It’s just so easy to add into recipes, and I think it contributes an awesome starch 🙂 I prefer to use a Japanese sweet potato here, which is white in color, but if you can only find orange, that will do too! It will add to a more pink/orange color for your cake 🙂
Oat Flour: here, you can make your own oat flour, like I describe in my chocolate chip oatmeal bars and below in the recipe, or you can purchase yours at a store! Either way works 🙂 If you are making your own, make sure to add a half a cup extra to what the recipe below says (so 2 cups of whole oats to make 1 1/2 cups of oat flour).
Coconut Flour: another favorite ingredient of mine, coconut flour really helps to absorb a lot of the moisture in this cake (because we have a lot of wet ingredients going on!). Because this cake is so dense, I wouldn’t recommend subbing out any other flour here. Coconut flour does a wonderful job at absorbing moisture so that your cake comes out fluffy rather than dense!
Ground Flaxseed: another one of my favorite baking hacks is using a few tablespoons of ground flaxseed (which you can find at any grocery store) to use as a binder for this homemade strawberry cake! If you don’t have flaxseed, you can also use ground chia seed here!
Strawberries: well you just can’t have a strawberry cake without strawberries! For this recipe, you’ll be using strawberries for both the cake and the frosting, so make sure that you get two cartons of strawberries at your grocery store 🙂
Maple Syrup: the best part about this recipe is that we only use a teensy bit of maple syrup throughout the entire recipe! Only a tad bit in this vegan strawberry cake and then a small 1/4 cup in the vegan strawberry buttercream frosting 🙂
Vegan Butter: so like I said before, this gluten free strawberry cake can be made completely nut free, which I love because so many people with nut allergies can’t enjoy a lot of vegan and/or gluten free recipes since they contain a lot of nuts! Now, this all depends on the vegan butter that you purchase, but I used a non-nut vegan butter here and it worked perfectly. There are some vegan butters that do contain nuts, and they taste equally as delicious, but whatever you do, I just wouldn’t recommend subbing in coconut oil for it! It won’t hold haha!
How to make Vegan Strawberry Buttercream:
Now, the vegan strawberry buttercream sounds harder than it actually is. All you really need to do is make sure that your vegan butter is at room temperature (you want to be able to beat it!) and make sure to take your hand mixer out.
Add the softened vegan butter to a large bowl and begin by lightly beating the butter. Next, add in about 1/2 cup of the coconut flour (don’t worry, it won’t come out grainy!) and beat until well combined. Add in the second 1/2 cup of coconut flour and beat again.
Next, add in the strawberry puree and your desired amount of maple syrup (I liked using only 1/4 cup but Jared said he preferred 1/3-1/2 when I made it a second time- it’s whatever you prefer in terms of sweetness!).
Whip it all together using your hand mixer and voilà! You have yourself a cane sugar free vegan buttercream frosting perfect for your homemade strawberry cake!
Now you just need to ice the cake and you’re set 🙂
I hope you loved this recipe as much as I did! It’s perfect for a Mother’s Day brunch or any springtime celebration 🙂 And if you have any questions about swapping out ingredients, feel free to drop them in the comments below or you can download my free ingredient swap guide below!
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If you make something from The Banana Diaries, I would love to see your creations! Don’t forget tot rate this recipe and leave a comment below! Also, follow along with me on Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and Facebook for more vegan recipe inspiration!
PrintVegan Homemade Strawberry Cake with Strawberry Frosting
This easy homemade strawberry cake with strawberry frosting is absolutely delicious and refreshing while being vegan, gluten free, and refined sugar free! Perfect for a spring or summer’s day!
- Prep Time: 40
- Cook Time: 45
- Total Time: 1 hour 25 minutes
- Yield: 12 1x
Ingredients
Vegan Strawberry Cake:
- 1 1/2 cup baked Japanese sweet potato, mashed
- 2 tbsp maple syrup
- 3/4 cup coconut flour
- 1 1/2 cup oat flour*
- 3 tbsp ground flaxseed, mixed with 1/3 cup water*
- 1/2 cup melted vegan butter or olive oil
- 1 1/2 cups strawberries, sliced
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
Vegan Strawberry Frosting:
- 1 1/2 cups vegan butter, room temperature, use a nut-free version if nut-allergy
- 1 cup coconut flour, separated
- 1 cup strawberries, sliced
- 1/4–1/3 cup maple syrup
Instructions
To prepare the strawberry puree for the cake:
- In a medium sauce pan, heat strawberries with 1/3 cup water until it reaches a boil. Then reduce heat and cover.
- Let simmer for 5-7 minutes and then remove from heat.
- Once slightly cooled, puree heated strawberries and pour into a glass jar.
Strawberry Cake:
- Preheat oven to 375F and grease two 9″ cake pans with coconut oil.
- In a large food processor, blend all ingredients together except the strawberry puree.
- Add in the strawberry puree last and mix until well combined.
- Batter should be very thick. Pour batter evenly into both cake pans.
- Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes, or until lightly golden brown.
- Remove from the oven and let cool completely before frosting.
Strawberry Frosting:
- In a blender, puree strawberries (not heated). Set aside.
- In a large bowl, beat vegan butter until whipped.
- Add in 1/2 cup coconut flour and beat again until well combined.
- Add in a second 1/2 cup coconut flour and beat again.
- Next, add in maple syrup and pureed strawberries and beat again until whipped.
- Spread frosting onto cake evenly in layers.
- Store in fridge covered for a week.
Notes
*Oat flour: feel free to make your own oat flour here! All you’ll need is 2 cups of whole oats and blend them in a food processor!
*Flaxseed Eggs: you can absolutely use ground chia seed here as well or regular eggs if not doing vegan!
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 slice with frosting
- Calories: 481
- Sugar: 10
- Fat: 35
- Saturated Fat: 22
- Carbohydrates: 34
- Fiber: 9
- Protein: 8
This cake is so gorgeous and refreshing!!
★★★★★
Aw I’m so glad you loved it!!
WOW! I cannot wait to try this recipe, also I love your photography and photos. They look absolutely gorgeous!
★★★★★
You are just the sweetest, thank you Erin!!! I hope you love it!
Hi, how do you bake the sweet potato? At what temperature? Thanks!
Hi Carol! You can bake the sweet potato at 400F on a parchment-lined baking sheet for 1 hour! I have a whole post here: https://thebananadiaries.com/baked-sweet-potato/ Enjoy!!