My SIL has asked me to make my niece's birthday cake (as my family's gift to her) in a few weeks.  I told her that would be fine and she wants the rose swirl cake that's everywhere on Pinterest these days.

They are used to grocery store cakes but do enjoy mine when I share them.  I am thinking that the amount of buttercream it will take to do the rose swirls will be a lot for them, since they normally get the "whipped cream" icing on their grocery store sheet cakes.  I anticipate some of the (other) family members scraping it off.  It's fine if they prefer to eat their piece sans buttercream, but I think I should do some type of filling, instead of more buttercream, considering they aren't wild about buttercream to begin with.

Some of my ideas are a whipped cream sort of filling (I have seen this somewhere but it's still in the "idea" stage), a chocolate ganache filling, or vanilla pudding style filling.  My SIL did like a red velvet cake I did recently with a vanilla pudding filling.  Her input on the filling idea is "just nothing weird", which they thought my daughter's last birthday cake (lemon with raspberry filling) was "weird".  So ... I need some "normal" ideas or just a vote on whether whipped cream, ganache, or vanilla pudding would be good with a strawberry cake.

I've a big fan of pudding in cake, especially for kids. I vote pudding. 

Pudding is nice, but you might want to lighten it with  some whipped cream.

Also, a nice vanilla, white chocolate or strawberry mousse would be nice.  They would have some of the whipped consistency they're used to, but you get to be more creative.

For children, I usually do chocolate or vanilla with Oreo filling.  I basically crush Oreos into buttercream, using much much more Oreos than buttercream.  Everyone loves it because it's like a soft Oreo in the middle of the cake.  Jell-O makes an instant Oreo pudding.  You could make that and add even more Oreos to it for something lighter.

Hi,

I prefer mixed strawberries with whipped cream, add a little vanilla sugar.

My children love this.

www.squidoo.com/dragon-birthday-cake
 

Good luck