Strawberry Bread
Strawberries slow roasted to produced a pronounced flavor in this super moist quick bread.
Original recipe published May 19, 2019.
It’s may so goodbye banana bread and HELLO Strawberry bread! Here’s what to do with all those berries you bought/picked/were gifted (if you are the latter can I have them?!) but are going a bit soft because you can’t eat them quick enough!
Strawberry Bread Origins
Before I had my first daughter, I had never roasted berries nor did it ever cross my mind that roasting would be a genius way to prepare them. When she was getting into solids, I read a baby book recommended by our pediatrician which suggested roasting blueberries with cinnamon for a tasty puree. I tried it with some berries we had picked that June from a local farm and – we all thought it was incredible. I knew it would make any bake taste amazing, and came up with a recipe for a blueberry quick bread which was so good my husband and I wolfed it down within hours. I then, most disappointingly, either lost or forgot to write down the recipe.
I have tested for that recipe so many times since then but haven’t found that blueberry bread yet. I did however, manage to make it to roasted strawberry bread perfection. So, I come to you today with an easy and quick(ish) cake bread recipe. It is wonderfully moist and has a pronounced taste of strawberry with every bite.
When to make strawberry bread
This quick bread is the answer to what to do with May & June strawberries once they start to look a bit soft and you are no longer enjoying them ripe. The roasting releases all the juices and sugars into this lovely red mess which you then puree into strawberry deliciousness. If you want to make the bread but it’s not the season, use organic frozen strawberries (not conventional!). Organic berries will lend a much better flavor than conventional. Similarly, don’t use conventional fresh berries – you know the ones that are quite large, white colored inside? They just don’t have much flavor in them and are mostly water. Great for hydration I suppose, but not for cooking & baking.
Recipe Ingredients
Strawberries: See above! Note that you’ll need a particular amount for the puree so you might have some leftover. If so, use it for the glaze or spoon it over ice cream. Or toast. Or just eat it with a spoon, it’s lovely.
Butter: In quick bread recipes I usually opt for an oil rather than butter (it keeps things moist longer) but because of the extra water in the strawberry puree I find it not necessary here and keep the butter because it’s got such great flavor.
Sugar: Granulated, fine. Don’t reduce it – it’ll affect the texture (the moisture level!) of the cake.
Eggs: Large, no need to bring them to room temperature but do whisk them in very, very well.
Flour: All purpose. A gluten free 1 to 1 swap would work great too I think. If measuring by cup, sprinkle it into the cup and level it. Don’t dunk and pack it in!
Sour Cream: Full fat. You can use greek yogurt in place of it. I think a strawberry greek yogurt would be especially nice here!
The original version of this strawberry bread recipe (may 2019)
Oh hi! So the recipe in the box below is actually brand new but the original (in the photo above) is from (four!) years ago and I know it has some fans out there. And once in awhile I get a message on a recipe I’ve updated from someone who liked the original and they were disappointed I’d changed it. In case that’s you and this strawberry bread, I got you – here’s the original:
Instructions
- 1 ½ cups flour 180g
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- ⅓ cup canola oil
- ⅓ cup greek yogurt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- ¾ cups roasted strawberry puree*
- 2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon granulated sugar for sprinkling
Directions
- *To make the roasted puree: preheat oven to 400. On a sheet pan, spread out 2 heaped cups of sliced berries. Sprinkle with sugar. Roast for 20 minutes, tossing at 10 minutes. Once cool, puree in a food processor or blender. I usually strain mine before adding it to the cake to remove some of the seeds but this is up to you.
- Preheat oven to 375. Butter and flour a loaf pan.
- In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, beat together the eggs and sugar until very light in color, thick and fluffy in texture. About 5 minutes.
- With mixer running, slowly add canola oil and beat it in.
- Add yogurt and vanilla, beat to combine.
- Add flour and while beating on low, add berry puree and lemon juice.
- Pour into prepared loaf pan, sprinkle on the sugar and bake for 35-40 minutes.
Strawberry Bread
Ingredients
Strawberry Bread
- 300 g strawberries frozen organic or farm fresh*
- 113 g or ½ cup butter melted
- 200 g or 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 160 g or ⅔ cup strawberry puree
- ½ tsp fine sea salt
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 230 g or 1 ¾ cups all purpose flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- ¼ tsp baking soda
- 60 g or ¼ cup sour cream
Strawberry Glaze
- 2-3 tablespoons strawberry puree
- 1 ½ cups powdered sugar
- Lemon juice as needed
Method
- You have two options to cook down the berries, either in a pot on the stove or in a baking pan in the oven.
- For the oven, you’ll set the berries on a 13x9” cake pan and bake them in a preheated oven at 375 for about 20-30 minutes. Until the berries have softened, broken down and some of the water has evaporated (check out my roasted strawberry cheesecake recipe for visual images of what this should look like)
- For the stove, set the berries in a large pot over medium low heat. Cook until softened, and all the berries have broken down (you’ll see this method in the recipe video), it can take up to 35-45 minutes.
- Once you have your cooked berries, puree them in a blender. You can press through a fine mesh sieve if you want to remove the seeds (they aren’t really detectable in the bread so I generally don’t do this). You can make this in advance and store it in the fridge in a sealed jar. For the bread you’ll measure out 160g or ⅔ cup, use the rest for the glaze.
- Preheat the oven to 350 F. Flour and grease a standard size loaf pan (8 or 9” x 4.5 or 5”).
- In a heatproof bowl, melt the butter then add the sugar. Whisk very well, until you can’t detect any butter separate from the sugar. Add the eggs and whisk very well, for at least 2 minutes.
- Add the strawberry puree (⅔ cup or 160g - no more), the vanilla and salt and whisk well. Spoon in the flour, baking soda and powder. As you are mixing in the flour, add the sour cream and mix until everything is evenly incorporated. Try not to over mix though.
- Pour into the prepared loaf pan and even out the top. Bake for 45-55 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean from the center.
- Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes then remove and set on a cooling rack.
- If you are topping with the glaze, the bread should be completely cool.
- To make the glaze: combine the strawberry puree and sugar together, whisking and adding lemon juice only as needed to get a pourable glaze. It should be thick if you want it to stay on the cake, rather than slide off. Pour over the cake.
- Bread keeps great for a few days, stored in an airtight container.
Notes
Did you make this recipe?
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Do you think this would translate well to muffins? I have some strawberries that are turning and would love to make these for a grab and go breakfast treat.
Just made this recipe exactly as above. It is seriously delicious. Light and airy. The strawberry flavor is subtle. Excited to make this again with summer berries. Only thing I did differently was I needed to add about 5 more minutes to the cooking time.
Just made these, called them, and ate two of them.
So many strawberry bread recipes come out dense, not that there’s anything was wrong with that, but Sam’s recipe baked up very tender and light.
I liked her technique of beating the eggs and sugar until fluffy (almost 5 minutes) and then drizzling in the oil slowly, so it makes a nice creamy emulsion.
I stayed faithful to her recipe except for adding a little bit of cornmeal in place of some flour and making them into muffins. chose to leave the seeds in the strawberry purée, out of laziness, and they really turned out fantastic. The roasting really brings out the strawberry flavor.
I made this tonight and it was fabulous!!! I used sour cream in place of yogurt (don’t like taste/texture of yogurt), and did not strain the berries (didn’t notice the seeds). My was perfectly done at 30 minutes. CANNOT wait to make again.
Hey Sam! Do you think I could leave out the canola oil and sub in yogurt instead? 🙂
Hi Annabelle! Interesting swap, I think you might be able to but the result might be a bit different and I can’t say for sure how it would turn out. If you don’t have canola you could use olive or grape-seed, or even melted butter anything that wouldn’t be too strong.
Hi Sam!
This looks amazing and I would really like to try it out this weekend since I have some leftover strawberries.
When you say “standard loaf pan”, what size do you mean? I live in Europe, so I’m not really familiar with standard American pan sizes and I just want to make sure I get the quantities of the ingredients right.
Thank you!
I made this today and it turned out perfect. It tastes incredible, I will definitely be making it again! Thank you!
So happy to hear it Kate! Thanks for trying it out!
Hi Sophie! Good question. Our loaf pans are usually 8 1/2″ x 4 1/2″ or 9″ x5″ (roughly 23 cm x 13cm). Hope that helps!
Hi! This recipe looks amazing! Is there a way I can print it out? Didn’t see the print button.
Hi Alexandria! We don’t have a print option yet, working on it!
Hi, I was wondering if you could make the roasted strawberry puree and then freeze it to make the bread at a later date? Thank you!
Hi Gab! Maybe? I haven’t tried it. I also kind of think you could just freeze the strawberries and then roast them on the date you plan to make them.
Just made this and it’s honestly beautiful. I’m glad I read the previous comment because I was worried that there wasn’t enough strawberry puree to really have that flavor stand out, but I didn’t add any more because I didn’t want it to be too dense… And, oh my. The second I pulled it out of the oven the entire kitchen smells like roasted strawberries all over again! You would think I was roasting another pan. ? Thank you for such a beautiful recipe! Truly, this is the best strawberry cake I’ve ever had. ?
Dang, sorry I totally forgot to include this in my first comment but the only difference between the way my cake looks and the one in your pictures is the very top of it. Yours has this wonderful, almost angel-food-like crust on top and mine is just like a basic loaf split down the middle. I know this is so minute but I’m a perfectionist and just had to know, if u had any idea. Haha ? I know I’m totally crazy for even caring about that.
Hi Kimberly! Thank you for trying the bread and I’m SOO happy to hear you loved it! I think my crusty, rustic looking top came from sprinkling some sugar on top before the bake. I should add that to the notes! Thank you again <3
I made this today. I roasted the berries yesterday and was tempted just to use the purée for ice cream. I’m sad to say that when I made the bread, it fell. I know my parking powder and soda are near new and I used a cake tester before I took it out of the oven. I’m thinking I may have put too much purée in- mid-measured… Does that make sense?
It does taste good! It’s dense but so tasty! I will try it again!
Hi Toni! I’m so sorry it fell – aaargh! I have tested it a few times so I’m fairly confident in the leavening listed. I wonder if it could have been an over-measurement of puree as you say, that would definitely weigh the batter down. Also, from experience I know that loaf pan sizes can differ soo much, and when I overfill my loaf pan the cake will fall. If you make it again, try to make sure the batter doesn’t go above 2/3 of your pan. And if you do choose to make it into ice cream, I can’t say I’d blame you! <3