Two Thousand Two Hundred Forty Three

That’s how many pins I have on my boards in Pinterest. Not a huge number compared to some people on there...

But way out of the realm of what I can realistically accomplish.

If I did one project a day it would take me 6 years and 14 days to get them all done. 

And some of them are more-than-a-day projects! Of course, others can be done several in a day.

So what I’ve decided to do is sort through all those wonderful ideas and creativity and start making the ones that stand out to me, and saying goodbye to the ones that I will probably never use.

So for my first Pin Post – Hubby and I made Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries.

And yes. They are as good as they sound.

I had actually made these before off of Pinterest around February for a friend’s baby shower. 

They were a hit! 

But I didn’t take any pictures.

So this time I documented the results!

The original post is found here. She has a great step by step tutorial with awesome pictures on how to make these tasty treats! I recommend you check it out!

Here are the basic ingredients:

Strawberries – approx 20

1 8oz package of cream cheese

½ cup powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

graham crackers

chocolate chips (optional – but SO recommended by me)

Coring out the strawberries is probably the most tedious part of this whole process and by far will take you the longest. I found that a thin tipped steak knife works best for me. The slightly serrated edge makes it so much easier to get through the strawberries.

I’m assuming you already washed your berries, so take your paring tool to them and lop off the green tops, and then make a little cone on the inside, following the shape of the berry. This is where the cream cheese goodness goes!

You need room temperature cream cheese. I will stress that. ROOM TEMPERATURE cream cheese. If you don’t, then you get all kinds of little cheesy clumps in your mixture. Beat it up and add the powdered sugar and vanilla. I was feeling a bit spunky so I added a tablespoon more sugar, and did a whole teaspoon of vanilla!

Beat this in your mixer until it's all smooth. Scoop it into a ziploc bag (sandwich size worked good for me), snip off one corner, and you are ready to stuff.

Fill the strawberries. 

I almost stopped at this part - so glad I didn't! 

Once you have done that, this is where the graham crackers come in. 

Only, we really really wanted these when we made them. 

And we didn’t have graham crackers. 

So we used frosted flakes. 

Smashed up really good into nice little crumbs. 

They turned out to be a pretty decent substitute! Dip the end with the cheese mixture into the crumbs, they will stick and make your “crust”.

Now you can melt your chocolate. (I melted mine in the microwave in 30 second intervals. Make sure you stop and stir after every 30 seconds, otherwise your chocolate will burn and taste funny! Not that I know that from experience…)

I didn’t have a neat drizzle bottle to put the chocolate in to pipe it onto the berries, and didn’t feel like using a ziploc again. So I just drizzled it with a spoon. 

Which didn’t drizzle so much as clump. 

But it still tastes the same as if it were pretty.

Voila! Lovely yummy cheesecake strawberries!

Stick them in the fridge for a few seconds and the chocolate will harden to the berries! 

But... we found that we had a TON of the filling mixture left. So Hubby decided to do a little experiment (he loves cheesecake, this mixture was not going to waste).

He used half of our leftover smashed cornflakes and packed the bottom of a small dish with them. Then he piped in all the remaining “cheesecake” mixture. We put it in the fridge and forgot about it until the next day.

When we found it, Hubby put the other half of the leftover cornflakes on top of the mini “cake”. 

It was fantastic!! 

The cornflakes on the bottom had kind of changed texture and made a perfect crust, and the cheesecake mixture had set up perfectly just like an actual cheesecake. And the little bit of cornflake on top made a really nice crunch!

So if you don’t feel like hollowing out extra strawberries to use up your mixture, I highly suggest this!

We may have take a few bites before I hastily remembered my camera. 

Yum!