I have a confession to make.

This confession is hidden in a sinful red box.

And if it were to be stamped with a shameful scarlet letter, that letter would be a burning “B.”

(Cue dramatic violin music…)

Ta-daaa!

I made the cake above with a doctored cake mix from Betty—Betty Crocker, that is! Oh the shame! And the wagging fingers! Oyoyoy. I can hear my aunts (one of who is ironically named Auntie Betty!) clucking their tongues at me. All sins aside, this Strawberry Dream Cake was nothing to be ashamed of! It was a great dessert for a barbeque: fruity, cool, moist and creamy in each mouthful.

There are several variations of Strawberry Dream Cake, some of which use strawberry gelatin. I brought this to a potluck at a vegetarian friend’s house, so I knew the gelatin version wouldn’t fly (some gelatin is from ground animal bones, did you know?)

The cake itself has pureed fresh strawberries in it, so the white-cake-mix batter turned a slight pink.

Now I have no idea how this Strawberry Dream Cake came to be named as such, but I DO know that the dreamy part of it is the whipped-cream topping. It has the perfect secret ingredient that works superbly with strawberries: white chocolate! Yum.

The whipped topping also has the surprising ingredient of cream cheese. That, with the chopped white chocolate and some scalded milk, gives you this creamy dreamy sauce that you fold into store-bought whipped-cream topping. (Make the clucking stop!)

The recipe didn’t call for it, but while the cake was a bit warm, I poked some holes through it with the wider end of a chopstick and poured some of the sauce on top. It made for an even moister cake, with the sauce seeping through the holes.

After folding the sauce into the whipped topping, I was worried that it would get thinned out. To my surprise, something in the white chocolate+cream cheese+warm milk concoction stabilizes the whipped topping, making it easy to spread on a cake and firm enough to hold the weight of some halved strawberries.

I wanted a final touch. I spied some of these French Vanilla Pirouette wafer sticks by Pepperidge Farm that were a gift from a friend sitting on the kitchen shelf.

I crushed some of those and sprinkled them on top. They set off the red strawberries beautifully and provided a sweet crunch.

Voila! A dream worth diving headlong into! Nomnomnom.

Interested in whipping up this dream of a cake yourself? HERE’S the recipe I used.

And now you’ve heard one of my kitchen confessions. My, how the mighty have fallen. Today, a boxed cake mix, tomorrow, who knows?