Dessert, Recipes

Mini Vanilla Cake with Strawberry Filling

Learn how to make Mini Vanilla Cake with Strawberry Filling perfect for Valentine’s Day! These cute homemade desserts are made with vanilla cake, strawberry filling, and a fluffy vanilla buttercream.

Looking for the perfect Valentine’s Day dessert idea? These Mini Vanilla Cakes made with strawberry filling and vanilla cake and buttercream. These cute mini cakes are the idea single serve dessert, with enough to make two of them!

These Mini Vanilla Cakes start with a vanilla cake. Made in a sheet pan, this allows you to cut out your layers as big or as small as you want. Then you make a simple layer cake with vanilla vegan buttercream and strawberry filling. Finish off with some easy decorations and serve up this sweet treat for Valentine’s Day.

Top tips for make Mini Vanilla Cake:

  • Don’t overwork cake batter. Mixing the batter for too long can result in extra gluten development which would result in an unpleasantly chewy or gummy cake. Mix until just combined.
  • Allow the cooked cakes to cool completely. Before you can decorate or ice the cakes you need them to cool completely. You can do so at room temperature or use the fridge to speed up the process.
  • Beat the butter for the icing. For light and fluffy icing you want to get the butter light and fluffy. Plus beating the butter ahead of time and adding icing sugar a little bit at a time can help save you from a big icing sugar mess all over yourself.
  • The layers don’t have to be perfect. If the cake is a little uneven, that’s okay! You can fix any uneven layers with the strawberry filling and vegan buttercream icing.
  • Make cake pops with extra sheet pan cake. You will have scraps of cake left after cutting out the cakes. Use this for snacking or to make cake pops!

Mini Vanilla Cake FAQ:

How big is a mini cake?

We used a 3.5″ cookie cutter for these cakes but you can use whatever size you want!

How do you make cake from scratch?

It’s actually pretty easy! First we start out by making the cake batter. While that bakes and then cools we make the vegan buttercream icing and prepare the filling. Finally you build it!

What makes this cake moist?

It can be hard to imagine that a vegan cake would be moist. This cake is super moist because of the oil and liquid ratio in it.

How do you make cake vegan?

It’s actually pretty simple! Depending on what’s in your cake you can replace any eggs with flax eggs and milk with non-dairy milk. Butter can be replaced with oil (coconut oil is great) or vegan butter.

How do you measure a cup of flour?

We highly recommend using the weighted measurements but if you don’t have a scale cups can be used. But be warned a cup of flour can weigh different based on how you scoop it. To get an approximate weight we always recommend using a spoon to gently scoop flour into a measuring cup – DO NOT PACK DOWN.

Mini Vanilla Cake with Strawberry Filling

Learn how to make Mini Vanilla Cake with Strawberry Filling perfect for Valentine's Day! These cute homemade desserts are made with vanilla cake, strawberry filling, and a fluffy vanilla buttercream.
5 from 2 votes
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Course: Dessert
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour
Servings: 2 cakes

Ingredients

Vanilla Cake

  • 214 g (1¾ cups) all-purpose flour
  • 200 g (1 cup) sugar
  • 4 g (1 tsp) baking soda
  • 2 g (1/2 tsp) salt
  • 5 mL (1 tsp) white vinegar
  • 75 mL (5 tbsp) canola or vegetable oil
  • mL (1.5 tsp) vanilla extract
  • 240 mL (1 cup) water

Vegan Vanilla Buttercream

  • 113 g (½ cup) vegan butter
  • mL (1/2 tsp) vanilla extract
  • 185 g (1½ cups) icing sugar

Filling

  • 320 g (1 cup) seedless strawberry jam

Garnish

  • fresh strawberries, (for garnish)

Instructions

Bake Cakes:

  • Preheat oven to 350F.
  • Line baking sheet with parchment and grease
  • To a large bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt.
  • Add the vinegar, oil, vanilla, and water to the dry ingredients and mix until all combined and no lumps remain.
  • Pour into baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes.
  • Cool for 10 minutes before transferring to wire rack. Allow cake to fully cool before cutting out the rounds or frosting.*

Make Icing:

  • While the cake cools, prepare the icing. To a large bowl add vegan butter and using an electric beater or stand mixer, beat until fluffy. Add in the icing sugar ½ cup at a time and beat on low speed. Once all sugar is combined, add the vanilla and beat until combined.

Construct Cakes:

  • Using a round 3½" cookie cutter cut out 6 cake rounds – these will be the cake layers. On four of the rounds, add a layer of strawberry jam using a spoon or piping bag. On top of the jam, add a layer of the icing using a piping bag.
  • For the remaining two rounds, start at the outer edge of the cake and pipe icing along the edge, working your way to the centre. Depending on the piping tip you’re using, this will create a swirl pattern for your top layers.
  • Stack the icing and jam layers so that you have two cake, with two layers each. Add the icing only layer on top of each of the stacks to complete your two cakes.
  • To garnish the top, you can warm up a bit of the jam so that it’s runny and drizzle some over the top. Finish with a fresh strawberry on top.

Video

Notes

*You can speed up the process in the fridge.

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