A soft vanilla cake-like crust perfectly combines with a light layer of whipped cream cheese frosting. Top it off with fresh strawberries for delicious strawberry shortcake bars!
If you love the flavors in these bars, try some more shortcake inspired desserts. Our favorites are this No Bake Strawberry Shortcake, Strawberry Shortcake Kabobs, and even this poke cake!
bar version of a favorite!
Is your family like us in that we never need an excuse to make dessert? 😉
It should be a surprise that we love it, and one of our favorite summer treats is this recipe for Strawberry Shortcake Bars.
The super soft cake like crust perfectly combines with a light layer of cream cheese and whipped cream, topped with fresh cold strawberries. It’s heavenly!
It tastes just like a classic strawberry shortcake, but with a little less hassle. Plus, it easily feeds a crowd since you just make one pan and cut it into bars!
How to Make Strawberry Shortcake Bars
This recipe has two parts: The cake base and the whipped cream cheese topping.
Although the steps are super simple, make sure you plan ahead with time, because it does need to refrigerate for at least 3 hours!
CAKE BATTER. In a large bowl, beat together sugar and butter until creamy. Mix in eggs, baking powder and salt. Alternate between adding in the flour and milk, beating after each addition. Beat until all ingredients are combined. Stir in vanilla extract.
BAKE. Pour batter evenly into a greased and floured a 9 x 13 inch baking dish. Bake at 350 for 18-20 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Be sure not to over bake. Cake should be flat and light in color. Let cool completely. Set aside.
CREAM CHEESE TOPPING. In a large bowl, cream together cream cheese, powdered sugar and frozen whipped topping.
ASSEMBLE. Evenly spread cream cheese mixture over top of cooled cake. Top with diced strawberries. Refrigerate for 3 hours.
Tips and Variations
Make ahead: The ingredients of the cookie bars can be made ahead 1-2 days ahead of time and stored separately until you’re ready to assemble the cake.
Leftovers: Cover and store the leftovers in the fridge. The bars will last for a few days, but the strawberries will only last for a day or two. You can easily pick off the old strawberries and top with freshly cut berries.
Change it up: Include different fruits such as raspberries, blueberries, sliced bananas, sliced kiwi…whatever you think will taste great.
If you’re a fruit lover, I’m certain you will LOVE this simple but perfectly sweet Shortcake Bar recipe. See for yourself!
for even more fruity treats, check out:
- Pineapple Upside Down Cake
- Lemon Sheet Cake
- Cherry Sugar Cookie Bars
- Blackberry Cobbler
- White Chocolate Blueberry Lasagna
Strawberry Shortcake Bars Recipe
Ingredients
Butter Vanilla Cake
- ½ cup butter softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1 ½ cups all purpose flour
- ¾ cup milk
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 pint strawberries
Frosting
- 8 oz cream cheese softened
- ¼-½ cup powdered sugar
- 8 oz cool whip frozen
Instructions
- In a large bowl, beat together sugar and butter until creamy. Mix in eggs, baking powder and salt. Alternate between adding in the flour and milk, beating after each addition. Beat until all ingredients are combined. Stir in vanilla extract.
- Pour batter evenly into a greased and floured a 9 x 13 inch baking dish.
- Bake at 350 for 18-20 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. We sure not to over bake. Cake should be flat and light in color. Let cool completely. Set aside.
- Dice up strawberries and set aside.
- In a large bowl, cream together cream cheese, powdered sugar and frozen whipped topping. Evenly spread cream cheese mixture over top of cooled cake. Top with diced strawberries.
- Refrigerate for 3 hours.
Video
Recipe adapted from Divas Can Cook.
Hi! If I wanted the cake part to be a little thicker, do you think 1.5x the recipe would work? Obviously it would need to cook longer! Thanks!
I haven’t ever tried that, but you could certainly give it a try. You’ll definitely want to increase the cooking time and check with a toothpick. Just making sure it doesn’t rise over the sides of the pan. You’ll have to let us know how it turns out if you 1.5x the recipe. 🙂