Strawberries and Cream Cake - The Best Gluten Free Cake Recipe! (2024)

Assemble the Cake

When your cake is cool, put a metal or glass bowl and beaters from your hand mixer or whisk attachment from the stand mixer in the freezer for a few minutes. Then prep your strawberries.

Make the strawberry filling. Wash and dry your berries, remove the hull, and slice them. Then toss the sliced strawberries with a bit of sugar and allow the juices to release.

Whip the cream. Add the cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla to the chilled bowl and use the chilled beaters or whisk to beat the cream to soft peaks.

Layer the cake. Top the first layer of cake with whipped cream, berries, and another layer of whipped cream. Top with another layer of cake and repeat. Then place the final layer of cake on the top.

Finish the cake. Cover the entire cake with whipped cream. Garnish with strawberries or even White Chocolate Covered Strawberries, if desired. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Tips for the Best Gluten Free Cake

• Use parchment paper: Always line your cake pans with parchment paper to avoid having them stick.
• Freeze your bowl: Put the bowl that you’ll use for whipping the cream in the freezer for a few minutes and use very cold heavy cream to help it whip better. Try to whip it just before you are going to assemble the cake.
• Don’t overbeat: Be sure not to overbeat the whipped cream or it will separate and turn into butter.
• Make in advance: You can serve the cake right away, but I recommend making it a few hours in advance or the night before so that the cake gets super moist from absorbing some of the moisture from the whipped cream. However, I wouldn’t recommend storing leftovers for more than a day or so. It tastes best when fairly fresh.

What is the best gluten free flour for cakes?

Many people like to use their own custom blend of flours and starches for gluten free baking. But this recipe uses gluten free all purpose flour. Sometimes when you have to give up gluten, you want to be able to take a memory and recreate it without a lot of fuss.

That’s exactly what I did here. It has been tested with Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour. This is not a paid endorsem*nt. It is just what I’ve found to work the best when you want a simple substitute in a recipe without a lot of fuss with adjusting ratios.

Can you make gluten free cake in advance?

It is actually recommended to make and assemble the cake just a bit in advance, at least by a few hours or up to a day. This will allow the cake to absorb a bit of the flavor and moisture from the berries and cream. However, it is best eaten within a couple of days.

You can bake the cakes and wrap them, unfrosted, for several days, or freeze them for up to two months.

• Basics– Measuring cups and spoons, two bowls, a sifter or sieve to sift the dry ingredients, and a spatula, and a paring knife.
• Strawberry huller – OK, I may be a sucker for gadgets, and this isn’t necessary, per se. But this Strawberry Huller does make quick work of cutting the centers out of those berries. Perfect when you have to do a lot.
• Mixer– you can use a Kitchenaid stand mixer or a basic hand mixer. For whipping the cream, I like to use my simpleHamilton Beach Hand Mixerwith the whisk attachment.
• Cake pans – I use these Wilton 9-inch cake pans, but just to be certain there is no sticking, I always line my pans with parchment paper.

About My Grandmother

For the first twelve or thirteen years of my life, grandma lived five blocks from me. So I spent a lot of time with her. After church on Sundays, we would go to her house for dinner – pot roast or spaghetti or stuffed cabbage for the family (she always made me Grandma’s Polish Meatballs since I didn’t like cabbage). Every now and then, she would honor my special request for chicken noodle soup.

We would frequently drop by in the evening towatch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy with her and my grandpa. This especially happened if she had made a big pot of Easy Beefaroni (which she affectionately called “junk”).Then we would sit in the breezeway while she puffed away on her cigarettes. Grandma never smoked in the house, only in the breezeway or in the basem*nt. In the dead of winter, if she was at our house, we would send her outside to smoke.

If I was sick or had a day off fromschool, I’d stay at her house. She would make me toast with cream cheese, or scrambled eggs with American cheese for lunch. I’d watch Sesame Street or The Frugal Gourmet or Bob Ross while she watched her “stories” in the afternoon. If it was a Wednesday, I’d go to Bingo with her, where I’d draw my own Bingo boards and play along. Although more often than not, she would takeme to McDonald’s for a chicken nuggets Happy Meal, then to the bakery for a cupcake. Sometimes I’d even get to go to the beauty parlor with her.

I actually used to love sleeping over at her house, too. She and my grandpa had twin beds, a la Fred and Ethel. If I was there, he would sleep in the spare room so I could be in the room with her. We would watch the Golden Girls on her twelve-inch television. Sometimes I might make it to the opening credits of Dallas before falling asleep. In the morning, I was greeted with a bowl of sweet, buttery farina.

My grandma sounds like a pretty lively lady, doesn’t she? Well, she did her best, but she was about forty when rheumatoid arthritis hit. By the time I was born, she already had a hard time using her hands. Those Sunday dinners were a struggle for her and didn’t last very long in my life before she just couldn’t do it anymore. A full set of plastic knuckles didn’t make chopping and mixing very easy for her. And for Easter, my mom always had to knead the Paska while Grandma supervised.

While the simple foods she made for me hold a special place in my heart, I’m told she was actually an amazing cook. But, between her arthritic hands and my childhood pickiness, by the time I was old enough to appreciate and perhaps even learn from her, it was too late. I have a few scrawled recipes I’d like to try sometime, but that stuffed cabbage recipe is now only a memory.

As I grew older, I cooked a lot of Sunday dinners for her and my grandpa. While I think she usually enjoyed my cooking, I had to keep it a secret if I ever used any lighter or healthier ingredients. She insisted that healthy food tasted terrible. And she always seemed a little annoyed if she liked something, and then learned it was healthy.

Grandma was a tough cookie, though. Even though she couldn’t run around with her grandkids, she found a way to connect and be close to us. She taught me how to play solitaire, and we would do puzzles together. She would take me and my cousins to the park, or just sit in the backyard or talk to her backyard neighbor while we played.

Her health problems got worse as she got older, and she was supposed to quit smoking. She never really did though, even though some of the family thought she had. So when we would have family gatherings, as soon as we had dinner, she was ready for her dessert. Because she had to have her dessert before she left. I’m fairly certain it was not because she was tired or losing patience. I’m pretty sure it was because she needed to go have a cigarette but didn’t want to let any of us know she was still smoking. But she was caught on multiple occasions sitting in her car, puffing away in a random grocery store or department store parking lot.

She passed away when The Hubby and I were on vacation in Tuscany. I kind of knew it would happen while we were gone, but I believe in my heart that she truly wanted me to go on that trip. It was a bittersweet trip. But I felt like she and I had our closure on my last visit with her before we got on that airplane. I miss her terribly, though.

She had a tendency to nag me about the fact that her lady friends all had great-grandchildren. I had to remind her that she had my mom, her first child, when she was 23 – a bit older for her generation. Then my mom had me, her oldest, when she was 26 – actually a bit older for her generation too. So really, it wasn’t entirely my fault! But I really wish she could have met my boys. I think she and The Bug would have been best buds, and she would have gotten such a kick out of the Little Dude.

It’s strange, but her birthday and the anniversary of her passing often go by without me having any particularly strong thoughts of her. Yet on random days, I’ll be overwhelmed with thoughts of her. A couple of weeks ago I really didn’t want to go for my long run of the week. But I did and took a different path than I had taken before. It was a tough run. At 4.9 miles, I was overcome by the aroma of a lilac bush and was able to push through to the bitter end of that run.

As I walked the last half mile home to cool down, I was choking back tears, overcome with memories of my grandma. In her backyard was a line of lilac bushes, and the scent of the flowers permeated the air every spring and summer. And that moment and those lilacs just made me feel her presence more than I have in a long while. I knew she was with me and smiling down on me. That’s when I knew I had to make this cake.

Enjoy!