Cake with Strawberries & Chocolate Chips

Back in, I don't know, October maybe, on one of our big shopping trips to the valley, Jeff & I bought a huge bag of strawberries.  I grabbed for the normal size bag, and Jeff went for the huge bag.  I've been trying to work on using things from our freezer - I've bought very little at the store since we were last in the valley on December 31st - and came across the bag.

Back in Wisconsin, we were on the Fellowship team for church, so every 10 weeks I would make a bunch of treats.  I liked it because I could try recipes without having all this food in the house!  Well, up here, there is a pot-luck lunch after every church service.  So I pulled out my handy-dandy "Berries & Cherries" board from Pinterest, and got inspired.  We won't talk about the huge mess I made defrosting those strawberries...  Lets just say that using a cooling rack with nothing underneath is not the best option...

Many of the recipes I looked at called for a pan I didn't have - springform pan, 9x13 glass pan - so I decided to just stick with what I know and grabbed a good old box cake mix.  I mixed the box mix up like normal and put it into the pan.  I took the (huge) defrosted strawberries and set them into the cake mix, fairly close together.  Once that was done, I thought "what the heck" and threw couple handfuls of chocolate chips over the top (I have small hands).

before baking...

I baked the cake per the box mix instructions, and even with all the moisture of the added strawberries, the toothpick came out clean at the appropriate time.

...after baking

Soon as I took it out, I used the sifter to put a healthy dose of powdered sugar over the top.

I did all this about 90 minutes before we had to leave for church.  I was worried what would happen to the cake when I put the lid on for transport, but luckily the church is very close and it was fine.

And you know what?  The cake was good!  I would definitely cut the strawberries into pieces next time, or just plain put them in the blender and make it a real strawberry cake, but the taste was good and it was nice and moist.  And you know what, I think that powdered sugar over the top of a hot cake makes a way better topping than canned frosting.  Holy cow, I might not like canned frosting anymore...  My life will never be the same...