In this video, Chef John shares his simple and delicious recipe for Strawberry Blender Cake—a vibrant, fuss-free dessert that blends whole strawberries right into the batter for a naturally sweet, moist, and flavorful treat. Perfect for spring and summer gatherings or a quick weeknight dessert, this cake is as easy to make as it is to love.
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00:00Hello, this is Chef John from Foodwishes.com with Strawberry Blender Cake.
00:08That's right, making a batter with a blender might not make the best cake, but it might make your best cake.
00:15Especially if you plan on serving it with some sweet cream and fresh strawberries, which is exactly what we're going to do.
00:22And to get started, let's take care of the least exciting step first,
00:26which would be to place a piece of parchment paper in an oiled loaf pan or a loaf-shaped glass baking dish like I'm using here.
00:34And once that's been papered, we can head to the blender, where we will dump in one cup of sliced strawberries.
00:40And you see how those are nice and red and beautifully ripe and sweet?
00:44That is what you're going to want to use.
00:46And then to that we will add three eggs, followed by the vegetable oil of your choice.
00:51And pretty much anything with a neutral flavor will work.
00:54And then we're also going to want a nice big pinch of sugar,
00:58followed by the freshly grated zest from one lemon,
01:02as well as the juice from half the lemon.
01:06And then we'll finish up with a small touch of real pure vanilla extract.
01:10And once all that's in there, we'll pop on the lid,
01:12and we'll pulse this on and off to get it started,
01:15before we blend on high speed for about 10 seconds.
01:18And once that's set, we will stop and add the last ingredient,
01:23which is going to be a couple of cups of self-rising flour,
01:26which is simply regular flour that has some baking powder and salt mixed in.
01:30And that's it.
01:31We'll pop the lid back on, and we'll blend this for about 30 seconds or so.
01:35And if you have to stop a couple times and use a spatula to scrape the sides down,
01:39please do.
01:40All right, the only way to screw this up would be to have big clumps of unmixed in flour.
01:46So don't do that.
01:48And that's it.
01:49We'll go ahead and take that and transfer it into our prepared baking dish.
01:51And as I was doing this, I was thinking, man, that batter looks a little bit thin.
01:56And since this was a new recipe for me, that I adapted from an old citrus cake recipe,
02:01I was thinking, do I need a little more flour?
02:04Or did I maybe use too many strawberries?
02:07But anyway, we'll get to those questions later on in the video.
02:10But regardless of what cake batter you're talking about,
02:13once we transfer it in, we should grab a towel,
02:16and we should give this the old tappa tappa,
02:19which of course is going to settle the batter down,
02:21and possibly bring a few of the bigger air bubbles up to the top.
02:25And that's it once tapped.
02:27It's ready to transfer into the center of a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes.
02:33Or until it looks like this.
02:35Oh yeah, that looks pretty nice.
02:37And it looks pretty done.
02:39But as you know, we try not to guess in the kitchen.
02:42So we'll test it with a bamboo skewer,
02:44which should come out clean, and mine did.
02:47And once we know it's cooked long enough,
02:49what we'll do is let it cool right in the pan or dish,
02:51all the way down to room temp,
02:53before we try to slice it.
02:55And while we're waiting, we can move on to prep our strawberries.
02:58And for that, we will take a pound of them,
03:00and slice them up.
03:02And we'll pour over half a cup of sugar,
03:04and we'll give that the old shake-a-shake-a,
03:07before we grab a spoon,
03:08and sort of press things down.
03:11And we could, if we want, try to mix it at this point.
03:14But you're probably just going to get sugar everywhere,
03:16especially if you used a tiny bowl like this.
03:18So what I'm going to do after pressing everything down a little bit,
03:21is simply cover this with a plate,
03:23and put the spoon on top.
03:25And let it sit for about a half an hour.
03:28At which point we'll come back,
03:29and give it a proper stirring.
03:32And as you know, that sugar's going to draw out
03:33all those amazing juices from the berries.
03:36And the longer you let this sit,
03:38the juicier it's going to get.
03:40And my general game plan,
03:42is to let this sit on the counter for a couple hours,
03:44stirring it every 20 to 30 minutes or so.
03:47And once I'm happy with how the strawberries are looking,
03:50and with the amount of juice that's been produced,
03:53we can go ahead and wrap that up,
03:54and pop it in the fridge until we need it.
03:56Since I kind of like the strawberry component being cold.
03:59So that's exactly what I did.
04:02And then assuming our blender cake has cooled down all the way,
04:06we'll go ahead and remove that from the dish,
04:08and pull off the paper.
04:10And then I took a knife and sliced in,
04:12hoping I was wrong about thinking the batter was too thin.
04:15And the first slice actually looked pretty good,
04:17and I was feeling a little bit better.
04:20But after cutting the second piece,
04:21I could see we had an issue,
04:23which you're going to see even more clearly on the third piece.
04:26Right, you see that strip near the bottom,
04:28that looks sort of compressed,
04:30and almost like raw dough.
04:32And while the texture of the cake otherwise was pretty much perfect,
04:35and also I loved the flavor,
04:37I decided I did after all need to adjust the ingredient amounts.
04:41But the good news is, like I said,
04:43the sponge was really nice,
04:45and the cake had a very pleasant,
04:47surprisingly strong strawberry flavor.
04:48So before I headed back to the lab,
04:51I decided to play one up.
04:53And what we'll do first,
04:55is utterly and completely soak that sponge with our strawberry juices,
04:59as in absolute saturation,
05:01where it can't hold anymore.
05:03And then we'll top that with lots of fresh berries,
05:06before we transfer on more than enough sweetened whipped cream.
05:10And by the way,
05:11besides the whipped cream and a little bit of sugar,
05:13I also added in some mascarpone,
05:16since I enjoyed that so much in the recent strawberry sandov video.
05:20And of course,
05:20we'll include the ingredients for that in the written recipe.
05:23But if you want,
05:24just regular whipped cream will work.
05:26All right,
05:27just please do not use the whipped topping from the store.
05:30That stuff is evil,
05:31and bad luck.
05:33And that's it,
05:33we'll top our whipped cream with more strawberries.
05:36And then we'll top that with more strawberries,
05:39before finishing up,
05:40with a few more strawberries.
05:42And after taking way too many pictures,
05:44I grabbed a fork,
05:45and went in for a taste.
05:47And that, my friends,
05:48really was an amazing strawberry dessert.
05:51All right,
05:51what we have here is basically strawberry shortcake.
05:54But instead of using a plain piece of cake,
05:56or a biscuit,
05:57or a scone,
05:58or whatever you make your strawberry shortcake with,
06:01here we're using a base that already tastes like strawberry.
06:04And above and beyond that little bit of extra flavor,
06:06I thought the texture of the cake was perfect for this,
06:09since what we wanted to do
06:10is soak in lots of juice,
06:12without collapsing and becoming wet and mushy.
06:15Which can definitely happen with some types of cakes.
06:18My only complaint,
06:19is that I should have put this in a bowl,
06:21and eaten it with a spoon instead of a fork,
06:24so as to get every drop of goodness.
06:25But anyway,
06:27I deemed this a complete success,
06:29except that little bit of issue we had at the bottom of the cake.
06:31So I adjusted the amounts,
06:33and baked another loaf.
06:35And I'm very happy to report,
06:37that seemed to have fixed the problem.
06:39All right,
06:39it did have a little something in the center,
06:41but it was barely noticeable.
06:43And as you can see,
06:44this slice does look better.
06:45But of course I have to check,
06:48so I plated it up,
06:49in a bowl this time,
06:51and I ate it with a spoon.
06:53And I have to say,
06:54the cheater method for using a blender to make the batter,
06:57really does work out very well.
06:59And whether you're a total beginner,
07:01or an expert baker,
07:02as long as you can find some nice ripe sweet strawberries,
07:05I really do hope you give this a try soon.
07:09So please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts,
07:12a printable written recipe,
07:14and much more info as usual.
07:16And as always,
07:19enjoy.
07:20Enjoy.
07:20Enjoy.