I’ve always tried to love strawberry shortcake. I mean strawberries are amazing, so that’s a good start. But angel food cake is just a little too spongy for me, not to mention that it’s kind of impossible to cut into with a fork. And plain old whipped cream is, well, kind of plain. I want a strawberry shortcake with a little more soul, you know? And by soul, I mean flavor. And fat, of course.
So I set out to come up with the very best strawberry shortcake recipe, and make it look gorgeous at the same time. Because, sure, it would taste the same if it weren’t so pretty, but sometimes making something pretty is just fun. Especially when it tuns out that it’s not that hard.
I swapped out angel food cake and used a normal vanilla cake instead, which adds a lot of richness. And instead of whipped cream, I made a thicker, richer white chocolate cream using pudding mixes, sweetened condensed milk, and Cool Whip. This makes the most delicious strawberry shortcake you’ve ever tasted!
This recipe would be the perfect treat for Mother’s Day, or any other special day. It makes 10 individual shortcakes, and they look so fancy!
The best part is that because the cake and cream both start with boxed mixes, it’s fairly easy to put together. It just looks like it took forever!
You’ll want to start by baking the cake at least a couple of hours before you want to serve so it has plenty of time to cool. You could even make the cake and mix up the cream the night before serving if you wanted to plan ahead.
Decadent Mini Strawberry Shortcakes
Ingredients
- 1 box Vanilla Cake Mix
- Water Oil and Eggs as Listed on Box
- 2 lbs Fresh Strawberries
- 2 boxes Instant White Chocolate Pudding 3.4 oz
- 2 cups 2% Milk
- 1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk
- 1 tub Frozen Whipped Topping thawed, 8 oz
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Instructions
- Mix cake mix and other ingredients as listed on the box.
- Pour batter into greased jelly roll pan and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, until golden brown.
- Chill cake until no longer warm.
- In the meantime, whisk both boxes of instant pudding mix with cold milk until well combined.
- Whisk in sweetened condensed milk. Fold in thawed whipped topping.
- Pour cream mixture into gallon size resealable plastic bag and chill while cake is cooling.
- Reserve ten strawberries for garnish; dice remaining berries.
- When cake is cool, use 3 inch cookie cutter to cut 20 circles of cake.
- Cut ten strips of freezer paper (3in x 12in). Wrap each strip around the cookie cutter and tape to create a mini cake form.
- Layer one cake circle inside each paper form. Evenly divide berries among the 10 forms.
- Cut a corner off the bag of cream and pipe a generous layer of cream on each shortcake, then top with a second cake circle.
- Garnish with more cream and a sliced berry on top.
And watch this video to see how to put them together:
A few notes:
- Bake the cake in a jelly roll (high sided cookie sheet) pan for 15 minutes. Then you need to cool it completely – stick it in the freezer if you’d like to speed up this step. Once it’s completely cool you can use a 3 inch biscuit cutter or similar sized cup/glass to cut 20 cake circles. This is the cutter I used (affiliate link).
- While the cake is baking, you can mix together the white chocolate cream. Once it’s all combined, I like to pour it into a gallon size resealable bag. Chill it until the cake is completely cooled. Then when you’re putting the shortcakes together, you can cut a corner off the bag and “pipe” it on each shortcake.
- To make the “cake forms” you will cut freezer paper or wax paper into strips that are 3 inches wide and about 12 inches long. Wrap each piece around the biscuit cutter or glass you used to cut the cake circles and tape it closed.
Once the shortcakes are assembled, pop them back in the fridge until you are ready to serve. Garnish with more cream and a sliced strawberry on top of each shortcake.
Enjoy!
Abbey Jackson says
So good! 10/10
cora Russell says
I can’t find Vanilla cake mixes. Can I just put in a tsp of vanilla extract in a yellow cake mix?
Autumn says
Sure!
Ravi Ranjan says
Really awesome baking process and so easy to prepare it. You have really done a nice job. As you have shared the best things for me. Even this recipes can be made in busy time also. It’s really special for me. thanks for sharing it here on this site.
Katie says
This looks delicious, and very pretty. But I have to add that a traditional strawberry shortcake does not have angel food cake, but rather… shortcake! It’s like a biscuit, but it contains butter, cream, and more sugar.