I'm doing a wedding cake and the bride has requested fresh strawberries between the layers. How far ahead can I do that? It will be covered with buttercream frosting and refrigerated. It's Tuesday and the wedding is Saturday. I have the layers baked and refrigerated and would like to get the crumb coat on and the basic buttercream layer done asap. The cake will be stacked and then covered with buttercream ruffles. I don't want to wait until the last minute......

I make alot of cakes with fresh strawberry filling. I fill with a layer of stabilized whipped cream (Bettercream, Rich's or Pastry Pride), then sliced strawberries, then cover with another thin layer of whipped cream. This seems to "hold" everything in place. I do this on Friday night and I have decorated and refridgerated all night with no problems.
If you fill too early, the strawberries tend to get juicy and can leak. I find this this to happen more when I add sugar to the whipped cream. The sugar seems to make them produce lots of juice. This happened to me when I filled a cake with cream cheese frosting and fresh strawberries. The cake leaked strawberry juice but luckily I had only crumb coated it and was able to clean the mess up by pushing the filling in with the back of a spoon and then piping a "wall of whipped cream to block the leakage. It worked like a charm.

I wouldn't want to eat strawberries that were sliced 5 DAYS before and put in a cake. Sorry, when I work with fresh fruit, it gets prepared and put in the cake the night before, iced, and into the fridge it goes when I'm not decorating it. 5 days?

Thank you for your input. I have made many wedding cakes but never used fresh fruit between the layers. I will just have to wait until Friday to do it. It just always makes me nervous to wait until the last day....

I have made lots of cakes with fruit in between the layers and I always do it the night before ....I just want it to be s fresh as possible