Japanese Strawberry Shortcake Recipe

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Several years ago, we posted about a Japanese Strawberry Shortcake recipe on our blog which we thoroughly enjoyed. Since then, we have discovered a much better recipe that yields a cake that is much softer than the previous one. As one of our most popular recipes on this blog, we decided to share our updated and improved version of this recipe.

Japanese Strawberry Shortcake Recipe

This Japanese Strawberry Shortcake recipe was adapted from one of our favourite Japanese cooking website. The original recipe yield an 8-inch round cake but we felt that was too much cake for the two of us to eat. Instead, we scaled back the recipe to make a 2 layered 6-inch round cake instead. Although it was still too much cake for the two of us to eat, it was more manageable 🙂

What is the difference between a Japanese Strawberry Shortcake vs. Western Strawberry Shortcake?

Western Strawberry Shortcake (or Strawberry Shortcake as most Americans know it as) is a dessert that is typically made with a sweet biscuit-like cake/scone that is split and filled with strawberries and sweetened whipped cream. The biscuits used for most shortcakes today generally use a lot of butter (opposed to Shortening which was traditionally used), rubbed into a flour mixture to produce a tender biscuit with a slightly flaky texture.

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Image courtesy of NYTimes Cooking

Japanese Strawberry Shortcake on the other hand is a dessert that is made of layered sponge cake with a strawberry and whipped cream filling and whipped cream frosting. As a result, this cake is much softer and lighter in texture in comparison to its American counterpart. Apparently in Japan, it is also commonly sold as “Christmas Cake” and often the cake of choice for Birthdays and the Christmas holiday.

Japanese Strawberry Shortcake

Tips & Tricks to Succeed at this Japanese Strawberry Shortcake Recipe

1. Use Cake Flour

I used to think there was no difference between using all purpose flour vs cake flour when baking a cake but boy was I wrong. The cakes I’ve made using cake flour turns out much softer and lighter in comparison to cakes I’ve made using all purpose flour.

Cake flour is made from very finely milled soft winter wheat and it has a much lower protein content (~8-9%) than all-purpose flour. As a result, it is finer, lighter, and softer. All purpose flour on the other hand has a protein content of ~10-14% and thus is not as light as cake flour. If you’re unable to get your hand on cake flour, you can substitute cake flour with all purpose flour by using the following formula – just make sure to sift the corn starch and all purpose flour mixture together:

1 cup All Purpose Flour – 2 Tablespoons All Purpose Flour + 2 Tablespoons cornstarch = 1 cup cake flour

2. Chill your tools before whipping cream

It is best to make whipping cream in a chilled metal mixing bowl because metal will remain cold much longer than say a plastic or glass mixing bowl. It’s important to have really cold cream and metal mixing bowl before making whipped cream because the fat globules in the whipping cream emulsify much faster and stay emulsified longer when cold.

3. Completely chill your cake before frosting

Many people who start decorating cakes for the first time make the mistake of not letting the cake fully chill before they start to frost their cake. If the cake retains any residual heat after it has come out of the oven and you start to frost it prematurely, the frosting (including whipped cream) will likely just melt off the cake. This is not what you want! Be patient, chill the cake for at least an hour (or in the fridge if you want to speed up the process) and make sure the cake is completely cool to the touch before you start frosting.

Japanese Strawberry Shortcake

4. Whip your whipping cream to stiff peaks

If you underwhip your whipping cream, it will be too watery and it won’t hold up when you try to frost and decorate your cake. You’ll know you achieved stiff peaks when you remove your whisk from the bowl and the whipping cream looks like this – you should also be able to flip the bowl upside down without any of the whipping cream falling out.

stiff peak

5. Do not overbake the cake

This may seem obvious but depending on the type/size of pan you use and the temperature of your oven, there is a chance you might overbake your cake. This will result in a cake that’s on the drier side. To avoid this, I always recommend people to check in on their cake 5-10 minutes before the recommended bake time just to see if the cake has fully cooked. It’s better to underbake the cake slightly because you can bake it more but you can’t undo it if you overbaked it. The moment that cake tester or toothpick comes out clean, take it out of the oven right away!

6. Don’t be afraid to use piping tips!

If you want that “Professional Finish”, use a piping tip to jazz up your cake! We piped little rosettes on top of our cake with the leftover whipping cream using Wilton’s 1M Open-Star piping tip.

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Now that we got that out of the way, let’s make Japanese Strawberry Shortcake! The instructions are quite detailed so follow carefully below.

If you made this recipe, please comment down below and tag us on Instagram @cookingwithteamj. If you enjoyed this recipe, check out our other Strawberry Recipes:



8 thoughts on “Japanese Strawberry Shortcake Recipe”

  • This looks delicious! A couple of my friends use to have Japanese cakes for their birthdays covered in loads of fruit, I was always a little jealous! Now I can make this one thanks for sharing. 😄

    • Yes it’s super easy! Soon you’ll be making your friends jealous when you impress them with your baking and cake decorating skills 😉

    • This is a delicate cake so here are a few things that could have potentially gone wrong:

      1) When whisking the egg mixture until it turns pale and fluffy, it’s possible that this was under-whisked and thus, not enough air was incorporated to make the mixture airy. You’ll know the mixture is sufficiently whisked when you try to lift the whisk up from the mixture and it leaves behind ribbon streaks in the batter (i.e. the streaks of batter don’t disappear into the batter right away).

      2) When incorporating the flour into the egg mixture, make sure to fold it in gently with a spatula and not mix to aggressively as this could ‘deflate’ the mixture. You just want to fold until you don’t see any dry lumps of flour.

      3) Make sure the melted butter you add into the mixture is not scalding hot (should be room temp). Pouring the butter mixture over a rubber spatula before it hits the batter will reduce the chance of the batter being deflated.

      Hope this helps!

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