I have a very good yellow cake recipe that my grandmother gave me years ago and she always made it on my birthday with vanilla icing. She has since passed away and my birthday is in a couple of days and I make it for myself every year. (It doesn’t taste as good as when she made it, but it makes me feel better). Anyway, my question is can I add 1/2 cup-1cup of pureed, sweetened fruit (strawberries) without hurting the finished product? I am afraid that it will throw off the wet/dry ratio. Do I need to make any special adjustments to make it work? Thanks for the help.

I guess the only way to know for sure it to try, but I think you may be disappointed with the results.  You might have better luck adding the fruit puree to your frosting instead, or just drizzle it on the cake slices afterwards.

I made a cake last month for someone who insisted on either a strawberry or raspberry flavored cake. She wanted the frosting to be vanilla.

So I made at least 4 test cakes using various recipes from the Cake Bible, replacing some of the liquid with pureed fruit.  All of them came out dense, like a fruit flavored brownie, with the exception of one in which I used raspberry Jello. I think I used about 1/4 cup raspberry puree and replaced some of the sugar with the Jello. But I still wasn’t happy with it because it just didn’t taste good to me.

After reading Rose’s post on this topic (http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/2006/01/fresh_fruit_purees_added_to_ca.html) I eventually gave up and figured the only way to get a light and airy fruit flavored cake was to go with a doctored mix.
I got permission from my friend to use a mix, but it hurt me to make it.

Go ahead and try it…maybe your recipe will hold up better. At the very least you’ll end up with a good strawberry brownie.