• Prepare your three 9 inch round pans: butter them, put parchment paper rounds in the bottom and lightly flour them dumping out any loose flour. Hull the strawberries and cut into pieces 1/2" or smaller. Preheat the oven to 350° F.

Cake Instructions

• Add your cake mix, baking powder and salt into one bowl and whisk to combine thoroughly.
• Use the paddle attachment with your stand mixer and in the bowl whip together the butter and sugar until its fluffy and a pale yellow color. Scraping the sides of the bowl as needed.
• Mix in the eggs and egg yolks, followed by the vanilla.
• Add 1/3 of the flour mixture in, then 1/2 of the milk, alternating until its all combined. Once again scrape the sides as needed.
• Divide the better equally between the three 9 inch round pans and bake for 25-30 minutes. The cake is done when a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
• Cool in the pans for about 5 minutes. Run a knife gently around the edge of the cakes to make sure they are loose and invert them onto wire racks to continue to cool down.
• **(After about 25 minutes I put my cake layers into unzipped gallon size bags to finish cooling so they are not so susceptible to cracking.)

Frosting Instructions

• In your electric mixer with a whisk attachment now, Beat the heavy cream until it starts to form soft peaks. Scraping the sides as needed.
• Add in 1/3 c of the powdered sugar and whip again until it starts to form "stiff" peaks this time. Scrape the sides as necessary. This is very important so the topping isn't too runny.
• Now in another electric mixer bowl add your cream cheese and with the paddle attachment once again, beat the cream cheese until its' smooth and fluffy. You don't want to have chunks of cream cheese in your topping.
• Now add in the remaining 2/3 c of powdered sugar and vanilla whip it once again scraping the sides to get a thorough topping.
• Once this is combined nicely you can add a few drops of red food color gel or paste if you want to give your topping a pink hue.
• Scrape this mixer bowl into a large mixing bowl then add in the strawberry pieces and fold them in until strawberries are consistently throughout.
• Next fold in your whipping cream until it is all a uniform color.
• When the cake layers are cooled completely you can frost the cake.
• Store the cake in a sealed container in the refrigerator.