Over the Memorial Day weekend, we had a house full of family and friends. They all agreed to taste my first attempt at the strawberry cake mentioned above and give back criticism. So, I made the cake and focused on the basics such as taste, color, crumb, etc. and not so much the presentation. I just frosted it like a typical, homemade cake...no fancy stuff. I made the cake exactly as the recipe said, except for adding some strawberry jam in between the 2 layers.
The result was good, but I would not say that it was competition worthy. The freeze-dried strawberries in the cream cheese frosting really gave it a strawberry taste, but they made it a weird, "pepto bismal pink," color that I wasn't too keen on. The cake was a beautiful texture...very moist and velvety, but it could have risen just a bit higher and in spite of adding a drop of red, gel, food coloring, it still came out an unappealing, tan color. (There were many people in the comments section on the recipe page that had the same problem.)
Everyone agreed that adding the layer of strawberry jam was a good idea. There were lots of other constructive criticisms, and suggestions such as adding fresh strawberries to the center layer and on top, adding less dried strawberry powder to the frosting and adding more food color to the batter.
All said and done, I'm not sure if this is the cake recipe for the county fair. I'm looking into other recipes such as a different type of strawberry cake, or possibly a Root Beer Cake, Key Lime-Coconut Cake, Chocolate Salted Caramel Cake, or going back and trying to improve on my Hummingbird Cake, which I've made many times.
~C