Chocolate covered strawberries on cake

This is two projects: a cake and a bunch of strawberries.  You should not assemble them together until you get to the site of the party.

So the cake can sit in the fridge overnight. It will be nice and solid for the car ride.

I don't know if your strawberries have to sit at room temperature or not. Try a half dozen later today and you will know for sure.

Strawberries must be refrigerated... they can grow mold overnight if left out at room temperature.
 

Get friendly with the produce clerk at your preferred store.  I "do" produce as my job.  Ask them if they have a newer shipment in the back and explain why...be super sweet and they'll likely go back and pull you a box that just came in.  Don't forget to follow up and show them pictures later!  Also, don't wash the berries until right before you're going to work with them.  The water can hasten spoiling. 
 

There are a lot of threads on here about chocolate dipped strawberries, one started by me in October or November.  I had to do chocolate dipped strawberries for a wedding.  I did a couple of trial runs because I wanted to make sure I knew what consistency for my A'peels I needed, and also what would happen if they were left out or refrigerated, and if they would leak.  My first two runs had them leaking both out of the fridge and in.  What I ended up doing was thinning them slightly with paramount crystals so that the chocolate wasn't too thick, and once the chocolate had set, I lifted each berry carefully off the parchment and "painted" on a layer of the chocolate to cover up the bit of berry that touched the parchment and didn't have chocolate on it.  By doing this, I managed to eliminate the oozing of the juice and delivered a nice clean berry..And I kept them in the fridge as well.  The other bit of advice I got was not to wash them in water but the wipe them off with a damp cloth.  The water can adversely affect the dipping (at least I believe that was the reasoning I read).

This is my thread --http://cakecentral.com/t/750704/tuxedo-strawberries-pricing-and-other-questions-need-reply-quickly

http://cakecentral.com/t/738127/chocolate-dipped-strawberries-when-to-put-them-on-cake

http://cakecentral.com/t/741413/chocolate-dipped-strawberry-questions

http://cakecentral.com/t/730946/chocolate-dipped-strawberries-question

There are a lot more there.