So my the school where my mom works had an event coming up which required our family bringing a dessert. Of course, in an effort to ever-sharpen my culinary skills, I volunteered to make one. I went with a dessert I found on my most current addiction–Pinterest. The recipe looked amazing and so, after a stop at the grocery store, I set out to make the chocolate-dipped, cheescake-stuffed strawberries (what a mouthful!) found here. I kept my iPhone handy, so many pictures accompany this culinary adventure.
The first step was hollowing out the inside of the strawberries–for this task, I used just used a small knife. I also cut off the tips of the strawberries so they’d stand upright. They turned out like this:
Some hollowed strawberries.
I used just about double the amount of strawberries. I thought this was going to take a lot longer than it did. Plus, you get to eat all the strawberry tips and guts (I made that sound incredibly appetizing, right?).
All the hollowed strawberries.
The next step involved dipping them in chocolate. One thing the recipe emphasizes and that I would emphasize even more is to make sure the strawberries are very very dry on the outside before you dip them–the chocolate won’t stick if they’re moist. My brief experience with cake pops last summer taught me that I am terrible at dipping things–but thankfully messiness didn’t matter as much with the strawberries. I dipped them about 2/5ths of the way into the chocolate, and then just sort of twirled them and set them on wax paper. This resulted with me having a lot of chocolate on my hands by the end.
Chocolate-dipped strawberries.
In retrospect, I would have dipped a little deeper into the chocolate. I only used about 3/4 of the bag of chocolate chips, and now they sit in the pantry and I am forced to eat them. Such struggles I face.
After that, it was time to make the cream cheese filling! While I did this, the chocolate-covered strawberries went in the freezer to set. This just involved some simple beating of the ingredients. I added a little more milk then I think I needed to, so the texture was a little more liquid-y then necessary. I should also add that I used reduced fat cream cheese, but added some extra sugar to compensate for this. Potentially somewhat counter-intuitive, oh well.
Mixing the cheescake filling. These are real action shots, I know.
And then it was time to fill them! I the handy-dandy cut a corner off a ziploc bag method to fill the strawberries and top them off with a nice swirl. This part was significantly easier than expected.
Filled strawberries.
Almost ready to eat!
I decided to take the advice of a comment on the page where I saw the recipe and top this off with graham cracker crumbs. At this point, the google-everything monster inside of me came out and literally googled “how to make graham cracker crumbs”. I wish I was kidding. One source recommended using a food processor, which I lack. Another said a rolling pin was useful if you could find a way to contain the crumbs. Then, I had a moment of genius.
This was my moment of genius. Really.
A ziploc bag! So simple! Yet brilliant! Okay, maybe not brilliant, but I felt clever at the moment. I am sure I am not the first person to come up with this, unfortunately. Anyways, I broke the crackers into the bag and sealed it then went over it with a rolling pin a few times.
Look at those perfect golden crumbs.
Then, right before it was time to leave, I sprinkled my lovely graham cracker crumbs atop my strawberries, which I had put in the fridge for a while. I must say, the final products were quite beautiful.
I could practically be a food photographer with this picture.
And there you have it! I sampled one runt strawberry and also let my mom try one. My rating? I’d say 3 napkins–they were tasty, but the filling was a little runny for my tastes and not quite at the cheesecake level I was hoping for.
My mom gave them a 4.5, but I’m rounding down in this case (there are no half napkins!).
By the time I got through the buffet line to the desserts, there were no longer any strawberries on the plate. So hopefully the general public’s opinion was a good one!
Remedial Cooking 
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