Name: Strawberry Crumb Cake
Prep time: 2 h 25 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 3 h
Cuisine: German
Ingredients: cooking spray for the pan; 2/3 cup all-purpose flour (85 g); 1/3 cup brown sugar (50 g); 3 tablespoons melted butter (36 g); 2 green cardamom pods (or 1/8 tsp ground cardamom); 1/4 cup warm water (57 g); 2 tsp instant yeast or active dry yeast; 1/4 cup sugar (white or brown sugar); 3/4 cup whole milk (170 mL); 2 large eggs, straight from the fridge; 4 Tablespoons butter (67 g); 2 and 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (360 g); 1/2 tsp salt; 16 oz sliced strawberries (454 g); 7 oz marzipan (200 g); 8 Tablespoons butter, at room temperature (113 g); 1 cup powdered sugar (120 g); 1 Tablespoon Frangelico or Amaretto liqueur; 1 Tablespoon cold coffee

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My strawberry crumb cake is a yeasted coffee cake, filled with marzipan and topped with luscious strawberries and a crunchy crumb topping.

I love German style crumb cakes. The idea is that you start with a simple yeasted dough. From there you roll it into a sheet of dough. When it rises, top it with whatever seasonal fruit that’s on hand plus streusel, and bake it. Just like that, you have a simple cake that easily serves over 20 people.

For this strawberry crumb cake, I went a step further. After baking, you’ll split the cake horizontally and fill it with a marzipan buttercream spiked with coffee and Frangelico. You could use just coffee or bump up the almond flavor and use Amaretto instead of Frangelico if you prefer. The filling adds another layer of flavor and adds some moisture to the yeast dough, which is great if you’re eating the cake when it’s been hanging out in the fridge for a couple days, which I would never do (sarcasm!).

In German this cake is called Erdbeerstreuselkuchen mit marzipan, but any way you slice it, it’s delicious.

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pieces of strawberry sheet cake on plate

Strawberry Crumb Cake with marzipan filling

Components and ingredients

Yeasted coffee cake dough: ultra soft and stretchy to fit into a sheet tray.
- Warm water
- Yeast: I use instant here, but active dry also works.
- Sugar: just a little granulated to make the yeast happy and give the dough flavor, texture, and color.
- Milk: whole milk.
- Butter: for flavor and texture.
- Eggs: further enriching the dough, adding color.
- Salt: for flavor.
Streusel, aka crumb topping: the same as my basic streusel, though we’re using a smaller batch here. We’re also adding a tiny bit of cardamom to this crumb topping because it tastes so good with strawberries.
Strawberries: simply sliced and tiled over the top of the dough.
Marzipan buttercream filling
- Marzipan: grated straight from the package to make it easier to incorporate into a smooth filling.
- Butter: to smooth everything out.
- Powdered sugar
- Coffee
- Frangelico liqueur: you can skip this and just use coffee or replace it with another liqueur. I love Amaretto here, and my Mom would use Chambord.

piece of strawberry sheet cake on spatula

Tips for making the best strawberry crumb cake

Make your streusel first: streusel bakes best when its cold. On a cake like this, it will get too brown if it is at room temperature. On a cake like this raspberry sour cream coffee cake, cold streusel sits pretty up on top and doesn’t sink or melt into the cake. So follow the order of operations in the recipe, and make the streusel first!
Don’t sugar the strawberries: everybody loves sugared strawberries. Sugared berries weep out all this gorgeous pink juice, but in this case we don’t want that. The strawberries in my strawberry crumb cake are purposely unsweetened. Sugar will affect the texture of both the strawberries and do weird things to the cake underneath. Plus the berries will get plenty of flavor from the streusel on top of them.
Use a mini rolling pan for the dough: It’s so easy to get a nice even sheet of dough with one of these mini rolling pins. Otherwise, you’ll have to roll the dough out on the counter and transfer it to the pan. With the mini rolling pin, you’ll only need a sprinkle of flour to roll out the dough and you can roll it right INSIDE the pan. This in turn will leave you with a softer, more tender cake.

Step by step process for making strawberry cake

Make the streusel: place in the fridge to cool while you make the rest of the cake.
Make the dough: let it rise. Once it’s risen once, roll it into your sheet pan.
Top cake with sliced strawberries and streusel.
Bake the cake.
Make the marzipan filling: do this while the cake is baking.
Cool the cake.
Split the cake and fill it with the marzipan.
Cut into 24 total pieces and serve.

How to make your strawberry cake ahead of time

Component cakes like this one are very easy to make ahead of time. Actually, give yourself 876 bonus smarty pants points for doing so because the cake comes together so fast if you do. Here’s how to work ahead of time it:

Streusel: make up to 1 month ahead of time. Freeze the crumb topping in a ziploc. Use it straight from the freezer, though it’s fine from the fridge too.
Marzipan filling: make up to 1 week ahead of time. Store it covered in the fridge. Take it out to warm up to a spreadable consistency again in the morning of the day you want to bake your cake.
Yeast dough: make the night before, then cover and refrigerate. You can roll the dough cold in the pan, just give it an hour to rise (instead of 30 minutes).

Strawberry Crumb Cake

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Author: Elizabeth Farr
Total Time: 3 hours
Yield: 24 pieces

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Description

A simple yeasted sheet cake is filled with a sophisticated marzipan filling spiked with Frangelico and topped with cardamom streusel. In German, this is Erdbeerstreuselkuchen.

Ingredients

Scale

cooking spray for the pan

Cardamom Streusel

2/3 cup all-purpose flour (85 g)
1/3 cup brown sugar (50 g)
3 tablespoons melted butter (36 g)
2 green cardamom pods (or 1/8 tsp ground cardamom)

Cake

1/4 cup warm water (57 g)
2 tsp instant yeast or active dry yeast
1/4 cup sugar (white or brown sugar)
3/4 cup whole milk (170 mL)
2 large eggs, straight from the fridge
4 Tablespoons butter (67 g)
2 and 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (360 g)
1/2 tsp salt

Strawberry Topping and marzipan filling

16 oz sliced strawberries (454 g)
7 oz marzipan (200 g)
8 Tablespoons butter, at room temperature (113 g)
1 cup powdered sugar (120 g)
1 Tablespoon Frangelico or Amaretto liqueur
1 Tablespoon cold coffee

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Instructions

Make the cardamom streusel:

If using whole cardamom, press on the cardamom pods so that they split. Remove the green outer covering, then crush the seeds in a mortar or pestle or spice grinder to a fine texture.

To make the streusel, In a small bowl, mix the flour, brown sugar and cardamom together until the sugar is evenly distributed in the flour.

Pour in the melted butter, then use a fork to toss the ingredients together. Stir everything together until the crumbs start to form.
Cover the bowl, and refrigerate the mixture until you’re done prepping the cake.

Make the cake:

Sprinkle the yeast on the warm water in a small bowl with a pinch of the sugar. Set aside for about 5 minutes until the yeast is foamy.
Warm the milk in a small pan on the stove until you see bubbles around the edges. Cut up the butter and add it to the pan to melt.
Crack your eggs and use a fork to whip them into the butter and milk mixture, then add in the sugar and salt and stir to combine. Check the temperature with your finger (the milk/egg mixture should be just warm to the touch.).
Put the flour into a large bowl or your stand mixer bowl. Make a well in the center with your hands, then pour in the milk mixture then the yeast mixture. Stir with a wooden spoon to make a rough dough.
After that, with a dough hook on your stand mixer, beat the dough for about 5 minutes on low speed (2 on a Kitchen Aid) until you get an elastic sticky dough.
Cover the dough with plastic wrap and allow to rise on the counter. If you’re working in a space with a warm room temperature, it will take the dough about 1 hour for the first rise.
Next, spray a half sheet pan with cooking spray.
Scrape the risen dough into the prepared pan, sprinkling a little bit of flour on top.
Use a small rolling pin to roll out the dough in the pan. When the dough starts resisting, let it rest for a minute before continuing to roll it out. Do your best to roll it into one even sheet. You may need to stretch the corners a little bit. Don’t worry if it doesn’t fit the pan perfectly.
Cover the dough again and allow to rest for 30 minutes.
Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (180 C).
Pull out your streusel from the fridge and use a fork or spoon to break up any large clumps of crumbs.
Arrange the fruit on top of the dough, then sprinkle dough evenly as best you can with the streusel over the fruit and dough.
Bake the cake for 30-35 minutes or until the dough springs back in the center and the streusel has begun to turn light golden brown and slightly crispy.
Cool the cake about 20 minutes.

Make the filling:

While the cake is baking, grate the marzipan. If you have a food processor, use the coarse cheese grating die.
Blend the grated marzipan with the butter, sugar, Frangelico and coffee until smooth, scraping down as necessary to get a smooth mixture.
Cut the cake into 4 pieces in the pan with a serrated knife.
Use a large spatula to lift out 1 piece, then split the piece horizontally into two layers. Spread a couple spoonfuls of the filling onto the bottom layer, then top with the strawberry layer.
Cut the filled cake into 6 equal pieces.
Repeat the splitting and filling of the rest of the cake.
Serve immediately, or chill until you need it, loosely covered with foil.

Notes

Can’t I just cut the cake into 2 layers at the same time?: Yes, though I prefer cutting it into fourths, then splitting each fourth as it’s easier to get more even layers. If you have a steady hand and an even hand, you go for it.
Don’t want to use booze?: use 2 tablespoons of coffee instead of the Frangelico or Amaretto. The filling will still have a ton of flavor that complements the cardamom and strawberries perfectly.
Make ahead: you can make the cardamom streusel a month ahead of time (store in the freezer), the filling a week ahead (store in the fridge), and the dough a day ahead (store in the fridge overnight…check out the note on the German Crumb Cake for how to work with cold dough.)
Freeze it: Freeze the cake wrapped in a double layer of plastic, then wrapped in foil for up to 2 months. Thaw in the fridge overnight.

Prep Time: 35 minutes
Additional Time: 1 hour 50 minutes
Cook Time: 35 minutes
Category: Cakes
Cuisine: German