Dolly Parton Strawberry Pound Cake

Make this easy Dolly Parton Strawberry Pound Cake with strawberry cake mix for a moist, tender cake bursting with sweet strawberry flavor.

This Dolly Parton Strawberry Pound Cake starts with a strawberry cake mix and transforms it into a rich, velvety Bundt cake with sour cream, five eggs, butter, and a surprise ingredient: strawberry shake pudding. The cake is a lovely natural blush pink, which immediately had me thinking about Dolly Parton, Steel Magnolias, and one of the most famous Southern weddings ever put on film.

And somehow, the more I thought about it, the more this cake and that movie seemed to belong together.

A Dolly Parton Strawberry Cake with a Steel Magnolias Twist

I'm baking my way through Dolly Parton's cake mixes right now, but I've decided I don't want to simply use her mixes and put her name in the recipe title. I want to really explore them—how they look, how they taste, how they behave when doctored, and what makes them different from the cake mixes I've been using for years.

I'm also having a little fun connecting each recipe to Dolly herself—her music, her movies, her Tennessee roots, and even some of my own memories.

The minute I started mixing this Strawberry Pound Cake, I knew exactly where this one was headed.

Steel Magnolias.

Dolly played Truvy Jones, the beauty-shop owner who provides the gathering place for that wonderful group of Southern women. And when I saw the color of my strawberry pound cake batter, all I could think was:

Blush and bashful.

Blush Really Is a Color

If you've seen Steel Magnolias, you probably remember that Shelby's wedding colors were blush and bashful. And if you haven't spent much time around weddings, you might think those are just fancy names for pink.

After years of making wedding and bridal shower cakes, I can tell you that Shelby was right.

Blush really is a thing.

It's softer than traditional pink. It's muted and delicate, without being baby pink or bubblegum pink.

And that's exactly what happened when I mixed this cake.

I didn't add a drop of food coloring. Dolly's strawberry cake mix, combined with the other ingredients, produced the loveliest soft blush-pink batter.

That caught my attention because it's something I'm beginning to notice about Dolly's fruit-flavored cake mixes. The colors and flavors seem milder and more natural than many of the traditional cake mixes I've used over the years.

Which makes me laugh a little.

Dolly has spent decades poking fun at her own decidedly unnatural approach to beauty, and somehow her cake mixes are the understated ones in the room.

My Review of Dolly Parton's Strawberry Cake Mix

This isn't the first Dolly Parton cake mix I've worked with, and a pattern is beginning to emerge.

With the exception of the chocolate mix, which became remarkably dark and rich once the liquids were added, I've found Dolly's mixes to be softer in both color and flavor than many traditional boxed mixes.

Her strawberry mix followed that pattern beautifully.

Rather than producing an aggressively bright pink batter with an overpowering artificial strawberry flavor, this one was surprisingly subtle. Once I added my pound-cake ingredients, the batter became that gorgeous blush color.

But the thing that has surprised me most about these Dolly mixes is the texture.

They seem extraordinarily fine, and the batters I've made with them have been almost velvety.

Now, I'm not giving Dolly all the credit for that.

I've been doctoring cake mixes for years, and I have a few tricks of my own.

My Trick for a Velvety Cake-Mix Pound Cake

One of my favorite tricks when making a cake-mix pound cake is using butter that's partially melted rather than completely liquid.

I also don't obsess over having every refrigerated ingredient sitting on the counter until it reaches some theoretically perfect room temperature.

Instead, I try to get my wet ingredients to a fairly uniform temperature before they meet the dry ingredients.

For this cake, my milk was slightly warm, my eggs had been sitting in warm water to take off the refrigerator chill, and my sour cream was still cold. My butter was very soft and partially melted. I combined those wet ingredients first.

The slightly warm ingredients took the chill off the colder ones, while the partially melted butter blended into everything beautifully. By the time that mixture went into the cake mix, the wet ingredients had essentially equalized one another.

And then I added another ingredient that may have taken this particular batter over the top.

The Secret Ingredient: Strawberry Shake Pudding

I happened to have a box of Sonic Strawberry Shake instant pudding in my pantry.

Well.

Dolly Strawberry Cake Mix, meet Strawberry Shake Pudding.

The combination was extraordinary.

Along with the pudding, this pound cake contains five eggs, sour cream, milk, and butter, so there's a lot happening here to create richness and structure.

The resulting batter was incredibly thick, smooth, creamy, and velvety.

I've made a lot of cakes in my life, so I don't say this lightly: before this cake ever went into the oven, I thought the batter might be one of the best I'd ever made.

I wasn't wrong, friends!

I've Actually Been to Steel Magnolias Country

My connection to Steel Magnolias goes beyond loving the movie. I've been to Natchitoches, Louisiana, where much of the movie was filmed, and I've always enjoyed seeing the familiar filming locations around town.

When I went there with my family, I made everybody come along while I visited some of the movie sites. We saw the river, of course. I love those scenes, especially the Easter egg hunt at the end of the movie.

I wanted to see the church where Shelby's wedding was filmed. And because I'm a baker, there was one more place I simply had to see. The grounds where that unforgettable groom's cake was served.

If you've seen Steel Magnolias, you know exactly which cake I'm talking about. How could a baker possibly go all the way to Natchitoches and not go looking for that?

I've even driven past the little house associated with Truvy, Dolly's character in the movie.

So years later, standing in my kitchen making a strawberry cake from a box with Dolly Parton's name on it and watching the batter turn Shelby's blush pink felt almost too perfect.

Sometimes I have to work to find the story behind a recipe.

This one apparently came with its own.

What We Add Changes Things

And then, while I was making this cake, I started thinking about something deeper. I've spent years teaching bakers that a boxed cake mix doesn't have to remain what it was when you opened the package. Change what you add to it, and you change what comes out of the oven.

This strawberry cake mix could have become an ordinary strawberry cake. Instead, I added five eggs, sour cream, butter, milk, and strawberry shake pudding and turned it into something entirely different—a rich, substantial pound cake.

And the more I thought about Steel Magnolias, the more appropriate that seemed. Because those women don't remain the same, either.

And That Brings Me Back to This Cake

Maybe that's what I love most about this particular cake.

At first glance, it's soft and delicate. The batter is the prettiest shade of blush pink. But underneath that delicate color is something much more substantial.

Five eggs. Sour cream. Butter. Milk. Pudding. This isn't going to be a light little strawberry cake.

It's a pound cake. Rich. Sturdy. Substantial. Stronger than it looks.

Come to think of it, that sounds pretty familiar.

Ingredients

You will find a full printable recipe card at the bottom of this post but here's a quick peek at what you're going to need. These are simple ingredients you should be able to find at your local grocery store. If they don't happen to carry Dolly Parton mixes you can choose the strawberry cake mix you prefer.

• 1 box Dolly Parton strawberry cake mix
• 1 box Sonic Strawberry Shake instant pudding
• 5 large eggs
• ¾ cup sour cream
• ½ cup (1 stick) butter, partially melted
• ⅔ cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

You'll find a printable recipe card at the bottom of this post.

How to Make Dolly Parton Strawberry Pound Cake

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Prepare a Bundt pan thoroughly with baker's spray or your preferred method for greasing and flouring a Bundt pan. Be especially careful to coat all of those grooves so the finished cake releases cleanly.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the Dolly Parton strawberry cake mix and Strawberry Shake instant pudding mix.

In a separate bowl, combine the eggs, sour cream, partially melted butter, milk, and vanilla. Mix until the wet ingredients are thoroughly incorporated and relatively uniform in temperature.

Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients.

Mix on low speed just until everything comes together. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, then continue mixing on medium speed until the batter is smooth, thick, and velvety.

Pour the batter evenly into the prepared Bundt pan and smooth the surface.

Bake at 325°F. Begin checking the cake at about 50 minutes. Insert a long toothpick or skewer into one of the thickest portions of the cake. You want it to come out clean or with a few moist crumbs, but no wet batter.

I'll add my exact tested baking time here after this cake comes out of the oven.

Allow the cake to cool in the Bundt pan before carefully turning it out onto a cooling rack.

Once the cake cools, dust with powdered sugar.

Slice and Enjoy!

Why Use a Bundt Pan?

This amount of batter is perfect for a Bundt cake. My larger tube/angel-food-style pan would have been more pan than this recipe needed, and I wanted enough height to give the finished cake a substantial pound-cake appearance.

A Bundt pan also gives this simple cake a beautiful shape without requiring any decorating. Once it's turned out of the pan, it shouldn't need much help.

And with that blush-pink interior waiting underneath?

I think the first slice may be decoration enough.

Can I Use Vanilla Pudding Instead?

Yes. If you can't find Strawberry Shake instant pudding, I would substitute a small box of vanilla instant pudding.

The strawberry pudding reinforces the flavor of Dolly's strawberry cake mix, but the pudding's other important job is contributing moisture and texture to the pound cake.

Vanilla should accomplish that without competing with the strawberry flavor.

Can I Add Fresh Strawberries?

You certainly could develop a strawberry pound cake that contains fresh berries, but I deliberately chose not to add them to this recipe.

I wanted to see what Dolly's strawberry cake mix could do, especially combined with the strawberry pudding. Fresh berries would introduce additional moisture and make it harder for me to evaluate the mix itself.

Based on the batter alone, I'm very glad I left them out.

More Dolly Parton Recipes

This Strawberry Pound Cake is part of my ongoing Dolly Parton baking series. I'm not simply using Dolly's cake mixes as ingredients; I'm reviewing them as I go, paying attention to their color, texture, flavor, and how they perform when I turn them into something other than the cake pictured on the box.

I'm also connecting the recipes to Dolly herself—her songs, movies, Tennessee roots, and some of my own memories along the way.

Be sure to check out my growing collection, including:

• Dolly Parton Banana Bread
• Dolly Parton Banana Bread Cookies
• Dolly Parton Pineapple Coconut Cake
• Dolly Parton Coconut Cookies with Lemon Glaze
• Dolly Parton Apples & Bananas Dump Cake
• Dolly Parton Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies with Nutella
• Dolly Parton Gooey Butter Bars
• Dolly Parton Mississippi Mud Cake
• Dolly Parton Sock It to Me Cake
• Dolly Parton Strawberry Lemonade Cheesecake Bars
• Dollywood Cinnamon Bread (Copycat Recipe)

Final Thoughts

What a delicious cake, friends! I took it to my small group and they loved it. Me? I loved the story almost as much as the cake itself. Somewhere along the way, this recipe became about much more than strawberry cake.

It became about Dolly and Truvy. Shelby and her blush-and-bashful wedding. My own trips to Natchitoches. A family full of horrified grandchildren yelling “NINA!!!!!” at the television. And a movie about a group of women who discover just how much life can change them.

I've spent years teaching people that what you add to a cake mix matters.

Maybe that's true of us, too. Life keeps adding ingredients. Some we'd choose. Some we wouldn't. Some make things sweeter, while others change us in ways we never saw coming.

And somehow we keep becoming.

This cake started as a simple box of strawberry cake mix. By the time I finished adding everything to it, it had become something richer, sturdier, and far more substantial than what I'd started with.

And yet, on the outside?

Blush pink and pretty as can be.

A little bit delicate.

A whole lot stronger than it looks.

I'd say that's a pretty good description of a steel magnolia.

Thanks for stopping by!

If you make this cake and love it please leave a comment or review. And before you go, please pin some photos to your Pinterest boards.

Janice Thompson is a professional baker, cake designer, and author with over 20 years of experience creating unique cakes and desserts. She’s the creator of Out of the Box Baking, where she shares her favorite doctored cake mix recipes, tutorials, and baking tips. Learn more →