Strawberry Cream Cheese Pound Cake starts with the perfect delicate yet dense cake crumb of my Cream Cheese Pound Cake. It is then filled with strawberry sauce and topped with a strawberry cream cheese frosting so every bite is full of that sweet strawberry flavor!
Strawberry Cream Cheese Pound Cake
This Strawberry Cream Cheese Pound Cake is broken down into three major components–the cream cheese pound cake, strawberry sauce, and strawberry cream cheese frosting. It is important to use good quality products for this recipe, so I opted for Challenge Butter and Challenge Cream Cheese to make sure that my cake would be the best tasting pound cake you will ever try!
Challenge Butter and Cream Cheese are both made the old-fashioned way, from the freshest milk and cream from happy cows at family-owned dairies. In fact, Challenge is the only major U.S. dairy product company that controls the whole process when it comes to making its butter, from milking the cows, to transporting milk, to making the butter to packaging and distributing. Talk about quality control! I used the butter in my Kentucky Butter Crunch Cake as well, and it did not disappoint!
Strawberry Cream Cheese Pound Cake Recipe
First off I have to mention that as you can see by the ingredients below, this is a FROM-SCRATCH strawberry cake that does not use a cake mix, gelatin, or jello to enhance the strawberry flavor. And I can tell you with certainty, it is a serious strawberry flavor! I might go so far as to say that it is the BEST strawberry cake I have ever had!
One thing to take note of, I can’t stress enough that this cake needs to be made with room temperature ingredients. This will ensure easier mixing and helps achieve that perfect crumb!
Pound Cake Ingredients (full recipe below)
- Challenge cream cheese
- Challenge butter
- Granulated sugar
- Eggs
- Vanilla extract
- Cake flour – cannot substitute all-purpose flour
- Buttermilk
- Strawberries
Strawberry Sauce Ingredients
- Granulated sugar
- Water
- Strawberries (pureed)
Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting Ingredients
- Challenge cream cheese
- Challenge butter
- Confectioners’ sugar
- Vanilla
How to Make Strawberry Cream Cheese Pound Cake
Let’s start with the pound cake itself. I used my Cream Cheese Pound Cake as the base for a couple of reasons. It has been heavily tested and perfected and it tastes amazing. Perfection. People are known to have their eyes roll up in their heads when taking the first bite. It’s that good.
When mixing ingredients, make sure each ingredient is incorporated before moving on to the next! Be gentle with your batter. If you want to remove it from the stand mixer right after adding the flour and mix by hand that is just fine but make sure your flour is double sifted and that there are no lumps. As far as baking temperature and time, that is something you will want to keep a close eye on. If you happen to have any hot spots in your oven you may want to turn the cake halfway through baking.
The crust should be golden, not burnt. This means that 325°F is the highest you should go, but the length of baking might be longer. It took me listening to my grandma talk about a “true” pound cake for me to understand that a dark golden crust was the GOAL. I had always believed that the outside should not be dark at all, but this is not the case! There is an amazing flavor is those beautiful crust edges and something that a real pound cake definitely needs.
How to Make the Strawberry Sauce
The strawberry sauce is important for all that strawberry flavor to get into each bite of this pound cake. While the pound cake is cooling to room temperature, prepare the sauce.
- First, in a medium saucepan, heat up the sugar and water over medium heat. Whisk frequently for 8-10 minutes as the mixture comes to a low boil. Dissolve the sugar completely.
- Next, pour in the pureed strawberries and reduce the heat to medium-low. Cover the saucepan and let the mixture simmer for about 10 minutes, continuing to whisk frequently.
- With a fork, poke the pound cake, breaking up the bottom crust.
- Finally, pour 1 cup of the strawberry sauce over the broken pound cake. Reserve the second cup of sauce for the frosting. Let the cake cool to room temperature before you add the frosting.
How to Make Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting
The final piece of this recipe to really pull it all together is the strawberry cream cheese frosting. It’s the ‘icing on the cake’ if you will?. To make the frosting, combine the cream cheese, butter, confectioners’ sugar, vanilla, and the reserved cup of the strawberry sauce. Carefully flip over the pound cake onto a serving platter and pour the strawberry sauce on top. Top it with the rest of the fresh strawberries and serve it warm. Get ready for all the compliments you will be receiving after your guests take just one bite of this perfect dessert. Oh, and you should probably have some copies of the recipe handy because those will be requested!
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From Scratch Strawberry Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients
POUND CAKE
- 1 package (8-ounce) Challenge cream cheese, room temperature
- 1 1/4 cups (284g) Challenge butter, room temperature
- 3 cups (600g) granulated sugar
- 6 large (10 ounces) eggs, room temperature
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 3 cups (384g) cake flour
- 1/4 cups (60g) buttermilk, room temperature (or whole milk)
- 1 1/2 cups strawberries, diced and divided
STRAWBERRY SAUCE
- 1 cup (200g) granulated sugar
- 2/3 cup water
- 1 cup strawberries, pureed
STRAWBERRY CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
- 4 ounces Challenge cream cheese, room temperature
- 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons or 57g) Challenge butter, room temperature
- 1 cup (125g) confectioners' sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
POUND CAKE
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Preheat oven to 325°F. Prepare a large bundt pan with butter and flour or by spraying with non-stick spray. (My 10-inch bundt pan is 3 inches deep. There should be at least 1 1/2 inches between the height of the batter and the top edge of the pan.)
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In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine cream cheese and butter until smooth, about 3 minutes. (Can also use a hand-held mixer.)
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Add sugar gradually and beat until lighter and fluffier.
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Add eggs one at a time, beating well with each addition.
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Add in the vanilla.
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Add the flour all at once and mix until just combined.
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With the mixer on low, add in buttermilk and mix until just incorporated.
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Remove bowl from stand mixer and scrape with a rubber spatula to get every last bit of ingredient incorporated.
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Fold in 1 cup of the diced strawberries.
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Pour into the prepared bundt pan. Bake for 1 hour – 1 hour and 20 minutes. Check for doneness at 1 hour. (A toothpick inserted into the center of the cake should come out with a few crumbs but no wet batter when the cake is done. The crust will be a dark golden brown around the edges and lighter in the center.)
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Set cake on a cooling rack (still in the pan) to cool slightly while strawberry sauce is prepared.
STRAWBERRY SAUCE
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In a saucepan, over medium heat, add sugar and water. Whisk frequently and bring the mixture to a low boil (8-10 minutes).
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Add pureed strawberries and reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes, whisking occasionally.
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Remove from heat.
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Using a fork, poke the warm pound cake and break up the bottom crust. Do this all over the exposed cake.
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Pour 1 cup of the strawberry syrup over the broken cake. Allow the cake to cool to room temperature. While the cake cools, prepare the strawberry cream cheese frosting.
STRAWBERRY CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
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In a stand mixer combine cream cheese, butter, confectioners sugar, vanilla, and 1 cup of the strawberry syrup.
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Carefully flip the cake onto a serving platter.
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Pour strawberry topping over the top of the cake
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Top with remaining diced strawberries
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Serve immediately.