Fresh Strawberry Sheet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Make this naturally-flavored fresh strawberry sheet cake from scratch whenever you need a quick and easy dessert! It presents beautifully with no fancy technique, and don't forget the cream cheese frosting to set it off.

Simplicity wins out most days in my kitchen. And this strawberry cream cheese sheet cake is exactly that. Let's get into the delicious details!

And if you enjoy this recipe, you'll love my strawberry champagne cake donuts.

This simple summer cake recipe is bursting with fresh berry flavor, and it's moist, light, and sweet. You'll taste juicy, fresh strawberry notes and mellow vanilla. And the cream cheese frosting is tangy, rich, and sweet. Think strawberries and cream vibes!

👉🏾 More simple cake recipes to love: applesauce crumb cake, plum upside-down cake, tres leches sprinkle cake, plantain cake with salted peanut butter frosting!

Fresh Strawberries add flavor and subtle reddish color to this cake. If you want a brighter pink color and more intense flavor, you can supplement with a half ounce of freeze-dried strawberries.

All-Purpose Flour works just fine in this recipe. But you can use cake flour instead for a more delicate final texture in the cake. Add six tablespoons of cake flour to the recipe measurements

Granulated Sugar is my sweetener of choice in this recipe, but you can also use coconut sugar, brown sugar, or even a lower glycemic index sweetener like monk fruit syrup or honey. Just note that the level of sweetness in the cake will vary, and brown sugar will add a caramelized molasses-like flavor note.

Butter: You can use salted or unsalted butter here, just be sure to adjust the amount of sea salt in the recipe card if you use salted butter. Rich oils like coconut or avocado will also work in a pinch.

Baking Powder helps the cake rise. What if I don't have baking powder for this cake? You can substitute ¼ teaspoon of baking soda plus ½ teaspoon vinegar.

Berries - You can add raspberries, blueberries, and/or blackberries for a mixed berry flavor profile.

How to Make a Homemade Berry Sheet Cake

1. Step One: You can customize this flavored sheet cake by prepping the strawberries in different ways: Puree for the most consistent color throughout the cake or mash and muddle them to get small strawberry chunks.

2. Step Two: Whisk the dry cake ingredients together until combined.

Want more color in your fresh strawberry cake? Add one or two drops of red food coloring for extra pink color, if desired. And you can use an ounce of freeze-dried strawberries instead of fresh strawberries if you don't have access to fresh ones.

Making the Cream Cheese Frosting

Cream Cheese should be softened the room temperature for easy blending. If you try to blend cold cream cheese, it can leave solid hunks in your frosting.

Butter should be softened or melted. Use either salted or unsalted here.

Vanilla Extract helps meld the flavors together and you might not think it's necessary in cream cheese frosting, I promise you'll miss it in the final product so don't skip it!

This easy fresh strawberry cake recipe is made into a kind of strawberries & cream cake with scratch-made cream cheese frosting. I like mixing diced strawberries into the cream cheese frosting for extra flavor, color, and fun. Here are the steps!

8. Step Eight: Fold the diced strawberries into the frosting by hand.

9. Step Nine: Spread the frosting over top of the baked cake, stopping just short of the edges.

10. Step Ten: Cut cake into squares for serving and garnish each square with a strawberry slice, if desired.

Do you love cream cheese frosting? Try my praline cream cheese frosting recipe!

How to Serve a Sheet Cake

This strawberry cream cheese sheet cake is the fully-evolved (aka glowed up) version of a cake I used to make back in my undergrad days, but I've kept the broke student tendency of doing more with less.

Once fully cooled, feel free to decorate this cake in the pan for easier transport and storage. If you do turn the sheet cake out of the pan, don't flip it over to serve.

Spread the cream cheese frosting almost to the edges using an offset spatula or butter knife, then lay strawberry slices over top. This doubles as decoration and denotes the number of pieces!

More Favorite Easy Cake Recipes

Looking for more recipes like this? Try these:

I hope this Texas strawberry sheet cake soon and very soon. And sharing is caring, so be sure to pin the recipe for later and follow me over on Pinterest. Thanks for reading!