Stuffed Strawberries

 

This summer, my mom has gone alittle strawberry crazy- she buys them ALL of the time! When we go to the farmers' markets, she will buy the biggest container and then buy another in 2 weeks. Don't get me wrong, I love strawberries, but I am gonna get burnt out of them soon. We froze most of the strawberries for
smoothies and to keep during the winter, others went into a pie, most were eaten with ceral and the other we just eaten plain.
     When going through our fridge looking for some ingredients for a blueberry cake, I came upon an extra block of cream cheese that I never used. I remembered a few years ago when I made a tart and topped it with a cream cheese mixture and fresh berries. Looking at the tub of strawberries that took up almost half of the shelf, I decided that i would make a cream cheese sauce and eat it over the sweet red invaders of our fridge. Moments later, I decided to stuff the strawberries with a cream cheese filling instead of a sauce.

Cream Cheese Filling:

enough to fill 48 big strawberries

• 1 8oz block cream cheese, softened
• 2 tbsp. orange juice (I used 1 small orange)
• 2 tbsp. milk
• 1 tbsp. sugar
• chopped nut or chocolate to put on top (optional)

1. Mix all of the ingredients in a bowl, using an electric mixer.
2. Pour the mixture in a piping bag or a sandwich bag and cut the corner out.
3. Cut and fill the berries. You can cut the tops off and use a paring knife and cut out the middle, or cut the tops off and sit them on a plate and cut the into the top of the berry to fill, or cut the berry in half and make a sandwich.(the 1st picture)
4. Store the berries in the fridge and any extra cream in a baggie in the fridge.

Note: you may add more sugar if your berries are not too sweet, our strawberries were really sweet, so I held off on the sugar so it would not be overly sweet.
>>> Also if you wanted to use this mixture as a sauce( my original plan) thin out the mixture with some milk or part milk and orange juice.