
A few days ago, local cookbook author, food writer, and sometime Bites contributor Jennifer Justus posed a question to her Facebook friends. "Looking for a great strawberry cake recipe and overwhelmed by the Internet. Does anyone have a favorite to share?" No doubt a strawberry cake is on the minds of many people during strawberry season. I don't have a recipe to share, but I do have a truth bomb to share: Everyone's (er, maybe every Southerner's) favorite strawberry cake from childhood isn't made of Grandma's magic; it's made from boxes and frozen strawberries. Boxed white-cake mix and a box of strawberry Jell-O, to be precise, and last year's fruit, not fresh strawberries.Â
And it's not just Grandma's or Great-Grandma's strawberry cakes; restaurants rely on this same recipe, too. Why? Because bright pink, fluffy, and strawberry-y cake is almost impossible to make without Jell-O. The Jell-O ensures a consistent strawberry flavor and a palatable pink color. That's because cooked strawberries have a tendency to lose flavor intensity and turn brown. And frozen berries are often sweeter and riper. And if you're going to use Jell-O and frozen berries, what's the problem with using a box mix, too, right?
Since I don't eat gelatin (it's not vegetarian), I have researched strawberry cake, and to the best of my ability, I can't find that it even existed before the 1950s, when box mixes and Jell-O were all the rage in American kitchens. It's my belief that the cake may have been invented by either the makers of Jell-O or the box mixes or perhaps came from a recipe contest.
If you're surprised, you're not the only one. My own mother was surprised to learn some of her favorite cakes from childhood (including strawberry cake) started out in boxes, and in this NPR interview, cookbook author Jeremy Jackson talks about his struggle to re-create the cake from scratch. Check out both the original recipe (though many recipes call for cream cheese instead of butter for the frosting) as well as his updated version. (Jackson notes that he still uses frozen berries to get the best taste, but you can see in the photo accompanying the recipe that the cake's pink hue is just not as bright without the Jell-O.)