Valentine’s Day Strawberry Cake Roll

4.87 from 36 votes

Valentine’s Day Strawberry Cake Roll

Your friends and family will fall in love with this showstopping Valentine’s Day Strawberry Cake Roll! Filled with strawberry jam and sweet cream cheese, it delivers bakery-style results with easy-to-follow steps and helpful pro tips.

Prep Time45

Cook Time20

Chill Time2

Total Time3 5

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Keyword: cake roll, Valentine's Day Strawberry Cake Roll

Servings: to 10 servings

Calories: 527kcal

Author: Tara Teaspoon

Ingredients

Heart Pattern Batter:

1 large egg white
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon canola oil or avocado
2½ tablespoons all-purpose flour
Gel Paste Food Coloring I used Super Red and Deep Pink

Almond Génoise Cake:

¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon baking powder
5 large eggs
1 cup (218g) granulated sugar
1 teaspoon almond extract
¼ cup butter melted and cooled
1¼ cups (160g) all-purpose flour
Confectioners’ sugar for rolling the cake

Strawberry Cream Cheese Filling:

½ cup heavy cream
5 ounces cream cheese softened
⅔ cup confectioners’ sugar
¼ teaspoon almond extract
¾ cup strawberry jam
Strawberries for garnish

Instructions

Make heart pattern:

Line the bottom of a jelly roll pan (10-by-15 inches) with parchment. Heat oven to 350ºF.
With an electric mixer, whip egg white and sugar until soft peaks form, 3 to 4 minutes. Mix in oil and then gently fold in flour by hand. Do not over-mix.
Divide batter in half and color half red and half pink with food coloring. Place each color in a small ziptop bag and snip a small hole in one corner.
Pipe hearts, dots, and designs onto parchment in the pan, and freeze the pan 20 to 30 minutes.

Make and bake cake batter:

With an electric mixer or in a stand mixer, whip eggs, salt, and baking powder until very light and fluffy, 10 minutes with a hand mixer, 5 to 6 minutes in a stand mixer.
Gradually add the sugar while mixer is going (this should take about 1 ½ to 2 minutes). Add the almond extract and melted butter, and beat just a few more seconds to combine.
Use a whisk to carefully stir the flour into the batter until just combined. Immediately remove pan from the freezer and gently spread cake batter over the frozen heart designs.
Bake until cake is light golden brown and is just firm to the touch, 15 to 18 minutes.
While cake bakes, prepare a clean dish towel by lightly dusting it with confectioners’ sugar. Have a second clean towel on hand.
When cake is done, let sit in pan about one minute and then gently run a knife around the edges to loosen. Turn cake onto prepared towel. Remove parchment and lay second towel over the top of the heart designs. Carefully flip cake over in the towels.
Remove the towel from the plain side of the cake, then roll the warm cake inside the second towel from one short end to the other. The heart designs should be facing outward. Let cake roll cool for about 20 minutes.

Make filling and finish cake:

In an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip heavy cream until firm peaks form. Remove whipped cream to a separate bowl.
Add cream cheese and confectioners’ sugar to the mixer and whip until very smooth. Then add the heavy whipped cream back to the bowl, along with the almond extract, and whip until mixture is just combined.
Unroll cake and place on a long piece of plastic wrap, then spread the plain, inside surface with the strawberry jam. Gently spread cream cheese filling over the jam (leaving about 1 inch at one end of the cake). Roll cake back up over filling.
Wrap cake roll in the plastic wrap and refrigerate 2 hours or overnight. Trim ends and serve on a platter with strawberry slices as garnish, if desired.

Video

Notes

One thing that is different with this Valentine's cake roll is that because the heart design is on the bottom when baked, you need to do an extra flip once the cake is out of the oven. Usually you simply turn the cake out and roll.

Here I used two clean kitchen towels to do this, turning the cake out of the pan, pulling off the parchment, then laying another towel on top and flipping over. Then simply roll the cake up in that towel to let it cool in the shape of a spiral.

This recipe has been updated as of February 2026. If you are looking for the previous version of the recipe, you can find it here.

Nutrition