If you like Strawberry Cake...

...then this post is definitely for you!

My wonderful roommate turned 21 recently (more to come on that later!), so of course there had to be a birthday cake! Birthday cakes are one of my absolutely favorite things to bake, so I was pretty excited. :)

This cake ended up being absolutely delicious. The whole thing was gone in just over 24 hours. I could've eaten this cake with every meal for a week. It was that yummy. The yumminess is pretty surprising considering I took the easy way out and made it with cake mix (I'm a college student! I don't have time to bake from scratch every time!). I went with Duncan Hines' Strawberry Supreme and prepared it according to the directions, except for that I mixed in half a package of cream cheese in as well. Into two 8-inch cake pans it went, and out of the oven it came soon after!

I immediately inverted the cakes onto plates, and stuck both plates in the freezer. This is a trick I learned from someone, but I can't remember who! Freezing the cakes for a couple of hours keeps them from crumbling and makes them much easier to move around.

When they were out of the freezer I took a big knife and sliced each layer in two. If you're good at math, you know that I ended up with four layers! I used Strawberries 'N Cream icing and put the cake together like this:

Layer
Strawberry Jam
Layer
Icing
Layer
Strawberry Jam
Layer

Then I covered the whole thing in icing! Mmmm! I piped on the writing and the borders using my Wilton icing bags and tips, with vanilla icing dyed yellow with gel food coloring. I sooo wish I had a picture of the inside of this cake...the strawberry jam made it so cute!

My advice to you all, MAKE THIS CAKE! Even if it isn't a birthday or a holiday or anything special, just make it! My friend W (who also happens to be one of my most frequent test tasters...) declared this the Yummiest Thing Ever Made, and that definitely makes it worth a try!

Happy Baking. :)