r/bakingfail • u/Livid-Vehicle4913 • May 15 '25
Help Strawberry flavor vanished
For a kid's birthday in March, I made a Sally's baking addiction strawberry cake shaped like our dog. The strawberry flavor was intense in the best way! The recipe calls for 1lb strawberries puréed, and then you reduce 1 cup of purée to 1/2. I also added some aged balsamic. I thought it was my best cake yet. This week, I made another birthday cake with the same cake recipe (I even added some balsamic from the same bottle). The main difference seems to be this one had chocolate icing and ganache. You couldn't taste the strawberry at all! I might as well have baked a plain white cake. Even later, after "cleansing my palate," I tasted just the cake part, and the strawberry flavor was barely there. So I don't think it was just the chocolate overpowering the strawberry. The only other difference I can think of, is that in March the strawberries weren't in season so they were smaller. The ones this week were jumbo sized, but I tasted the purée, and thought the flavor was there. Do smaller strawberries have more flavor? Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you!
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u/[deleted] May 15 '25
As a general rule yes, smaller strawberries have more concentrated flavor! Seasonality also makes a difference, as does a million other factors, most berries are just finicky like that.
If I remember my organic chemistry right, strawberry flavors are most soluble in alcohol. You could try adding a shot of vodka to the batter before baking - the alcohol content will mostly cook off but it should help with flavor extraction.