Strawberry-Lemon Loaf Cake

By Millie Peartree

Published July 29, 2021

Strawberry-Lemon Loaf Cake
Con Poulos for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Jerrie-Joy Redman-Lloyd.
Total Time
1½ hours
Rating
4(1,489)
Comments
Read comments

This cake is summer in a loaf pan. When baked, strawberries can become sour and a little gummy. Here, berries are macerated with sugar first to remove some of their liquid and concentrate their flavor. (Don’t use frozen strawberries. Keep those for your smoothie!) The lemon icing adds a nice finish, to balance and bolster the cake’s tart-sweetness. Have it as dessert or a snack, but it’s especially good at breakfast with hot coffee or tea. 

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Ingredients

Yield:One 9-inch loaf

    For the Cake

    • Nonstick cooking spray
    • 1cup/150 grams diced strawberries 
    • 1cup/200 grams plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
    • 1½cups/192 grams all-purpose flour
    • 1tablespoon lemon zest (from 1 lemon)
    • 2teaspoons baking powder
    • ½teaspoon kosher salt (Diamond Crystal)
    • 1cup/227 grams sour cream, at room temperature
    • ½cup/110 grams vegetable oil
    • 3large eggs, at room temperature
    • 1tablespoon lemon juice
    • 1teaspoon pure vanilla extract

    For the Lemon Glaze

    • 1cup/123 grams confectioners’ sugar
    • 1tablespoon lemon zest (from 1 lemon)
    • 2tablespoons lemon juice
Ingredient Substitution Guide
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Preparation

  1. Step 1

    Make the cake: Heat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.

  2. Step 2

    In a small bowl, toss the strawberries with 1 tablespoon sugar to macerate while you prepare the cake batter.

  3. Step 3

    In a large bowl, combine the flour, lemon zest, baking powder, salt and remaining 1 cup sugar. Whisk to combine. In a second large bowl, combine the sour cream, oil, eggs, lemon juice and vanilla extract. Whisk to combine.

  4. Step 4

    Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and stir gently to mix. Lift the macerated berries out of their liquid and add them to the batter. Gently fold in the berries until evenly incorporated.

  5. Step 5

    Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan. Bake until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean, 60 to 70 minutes. If it looks to be browning on top too much, tent with aluminum foil. Cool it in the pan on a rack for about 10 minutes, then unmold the cake carefully and transfer to the rack to cool completely.

  6. Step 6

    Make the glaze: In a small bowl, combine the confectioners’ sugar with the lemon zest and juice and stir until smooth. Pour the glaze over the cooled cake. Let stand until set.

Ratings

4 out of 5
1,489 user ratings
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Comments

Marsha

This looks like the glorious lemon drizzle cake I’ve made twice this summer, although mine was vegan. As with all good lemon drizzle cakes, you make lots of small holes in the top of the cake just after you take it out of the oven. Then you drizzle a lemon simple syrup over the cake, concentrating on those holes. When it’s cool, you it glaze it just as with this recipe. I decorated the cake with lemon zest and sliced strawberries. Everyone loved it.

Sumi

Careful with the advice to throw in extra strawberries as they add more water and can screw up the texture of the cake. I had a bunch of strawberries and so I added roughly 2 c of strawberries without thinking that fully through. No surprise, my cake was overly moist/spongy.

Julie

For those wanting more strawberry flavor without the added liquid, freeze dried strawberries.

Michael

I guess the nonstick spray is important, because I used butter instead and had a bit of an unmolding mishap :-( it also puffed up quite a bit in the oven. still tasty though.

Ashley

For the most part, I followed the recipe as written. I did make three swaps based off the ingredients I had enough of on hand at home. I swapped regular flour for gluten free, sour cream for low fat Greek yogurt, and regular sugar for coconut sugar. I did use some of the left over strawberry syrup in the icing based off recommendations. I really enjoyed the ease of making this cake, and it tasted great.

Emily M

I made this for a vegan friend’s birthday with flax as an egg substitute and plain coconut milk yogurt in place of sour cream, and it still worked great! Didn’t rise as much, and I had to leave it in the oven for 80 minutes, but the texture was amazing.

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