Strawberry Cake

I had been trying to make this strawberry cake recipe from the Cake Doctor Cookbook for months. Something just kept coming up. Home from the hospital and yearning for a snack I finally made it with some assistance from a fellow baker. I used Pamela's Vanilla Cake mix as my base and went from there.

It was super easy; you just need to have some gelatin and some strawberries in the house. I used my awesome blender to puree my strawberries but a food processor would do. I also decided to put the cake in my favorite square pan, even though the recipe was actually for a 2 layer cake.  I feel like some authors don't test out all the cake pan sizes to see how and how much the cake rises, and I had doubts about it being able to fill two round cake pans.

In the end it did make more batter than I expected, mainly from the extra volume of a cup of strawberry puree, so it made a tall cake, but who cares what shape it's in- cupcake, square, round, it was yummy!

The strawberry cream cheese frosting recipe was phenomenal! I used 6 oz instead of the suggested 4 oz of cream cheese. The only bummer is because of the cream cheese you need to store the cake in the fridge, which tends to try the cake out faster, but that's just my opinion.  

Also, my husband thought some strawberry puree with a little added sugar would be a good center filling with only the frosting on the outside, instead of the frosting in the center and on the outside like the recipe calls for. 

* From the Cake Doctor Bakes Gluten Free page 22