Cream Stuffed Strawberries

Dinner night with T is usually a fancy affair, so lately I've been trying to keep up by having special desserts planned to complete our sophisticated meals.

Last week at our friend's house (after I gave him his awesome cookies) his stepdad was chatting with Jeff and said that their friend stuffs strawberries with cream cheese for dessert. It sounded simple and awesome, so I thought I'd go for that this week for fancy dessert night.

I mentioned it to my coworker who is an awesome chef (and baker) to see if she had any input, and she suggested I try stuffing the strawberries with that new chocolate cream cheese that Philadelphia put out. I completely agreed and picked some up on the way home from work.

I wanted to stuff the non-chocolate strawberries with something more than just cream cheese, so I added 1/4 cup of sugar and 1/2 tsp vanilla and whipped it all together with an electric mixer before stuffing the strawberries. It was a sweet filling and it was very tasty. I didn't alter the chocolate at all because that would be sacrilege.

Both versions were pretty amazing, but the chocolate disappeared from the plate first. I would imagine that finding some way to dip these in chocolate to get a hard shell would be awesome, and I might experiment with that this summer.

-Aly

"Recipe"
Ingredients:
-Strawberries (enough for however many people you're feeding keeping in mind that they'll each want at least 2-3, or more in our case)
- Chocolate Cream Cheese
Cream Cheese Filling: (I halved these ingredients when I made it)
     -8 oz Plain Cream Cheese
     -1/2 cup Sugar
     -1 tsp Vanilla

Directions:
1. Rinse strawberries and cut off the tops with a paring knife in a cone shape to hollow them out (see pics above to see what they should look like)
2. Mix Plain Cream Cheese, Sugar, and Vanilla together with electric mixer until smooth and well blended.
3. Spoon the different fillings into the strawberries and place on a plate to serve.