When Love Happens: Valentine's Dessert for Those Who are Too Sick to Cook

Next to Christmas, Valentine's day might be #2 in my list of favorite holidays. I've always been a sucker for lace, doilies and hearts, even now as I approach my 30's. However, this Valentine's day, I am sick. I think I caught a flu from my students because I've been knocked out for the past several days. I also got my husband sick despite my efforts to NOT get him sick. Oops. Happy Valentine's Day dear!

We usually make prime rib for Valentine's day and eat in instead of dealing with the crowds. We are homebodies anyway so it makes sense for us. But prime rib was way too involved for two sick people so we decided to make a super simple, but delicious tri tip recipe and lobster tail. We haven't made lobster tail before, but we figure it involves boiling which shouldn't be too difficult. For dessert, I had to go simple too. So, I busted out a tried and true, super simple cake recipe my friends and I used in college.

I've never documented cooking before so there'll be a section where I pretty much forgot to take pictures. Please bear with me!

Ingredients:
-Yellow cake (you can make it from scratch, but since I was sick, I got a box of premade cake mix. Mine needed 3 eggs, 1 cup of water and 1/3 cup of oil)
-Fresh or frozen strawberries (defrosted)
-Sugar
-1 tub of cool whip

You'll need to mix the sugar and strawberries in a bowl a couple hours in advance and let it sit in the fridge. I didn't specify how much sugar because it'll depend on how sweet your berries are and how sweet you like your dessert.

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix up your amazingly easy yellow cake mix.
3. Lightly butter 2 round cake pans and dust them with flour so your cake pops out easily.

4. Check the back of your box to see how long you need to bake these puppies for. I like to pull them out a couple minutes early since they'll continue cooking a bit while they are cooling in the pans. Use the toothpick test to check if your cakes are done.

5. Let your cakes cool for 15-20 minutes before you pop them out.

6. To pop these out of the pan, I placed a flexible cutting mat on top of the pan and flipped my cake onto that. Then I placed my wooden cutting board on the other side of the cake and flipped it right side up.

7. Trim the tops of both cakes so that it's relatively flat.

8. Put one layer cake on your cake stand or plate.

9. Drain the juice from your strawberries. Take some of the strawberries and mix with 1/3 of the cool whip in a separate bowl.

10. Add a layer of of your strawberry/cool whip mixture onto the cake. If you like a lot of filling, then add more. Sorry, I took so long trying to take a photo, my cool whip started to melt. No worries though, you'll firm it all up in the fridge.