Strawberry Poppers

Yesterday, I went over to a friends house for a birthday extravaganza. I wanted to bring something that was light and refreshing. So I went to the store and strawberries were on sale for $1.99 a pound. Perfect, strawberry based dessert. Then I remembered a recipe that my friend made for my house warming party. Stuffed strawberry poppers.

Strawberry Poppers – (adapted from allrecipes.com)

• 1 lb of fresh strawberries
• 8oz cream cheese – allow to soften at room temp
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp almond extract
• 1/4 crushed walnuts

Cut off the stem end of each strawberry.  You don’t need to cut too deep.  You just need to make it flat so that the strawberries will stand on end. 

Then with the strawberries standing on the end that you just cut, cut a criss-cross pattern on top.  Cut about 3/4 the way through the strawberry.   That way you can expand the strawberries to stuff them, but they won’t fall apart.

Now with a mixer, combine the softened cream cheese, powdered sugar, vanilla extract and almond extract.  Whip until light and fluffy.

Now using a piping bag, ziploc bag, or a spoon fill each strawberry with the filling.  I used a ziploc bag as a piping bag.  Basically fill the bag and squeeze the filling to one corner.  Then snip off a little bit of the corner of the bag.  Now you can accurately squeeze the filling into each strawberry.  If you happend to have a pastry tip you can put that in the bag to get a little more accuracy, but it is not needed.

Once you have filled the strawberries with all of the filling, sprinkle the walnuts on the top.  Thats it.  A quick and easy summer time treat.

BTW- The party was awesome, they had pulled pork as the entree. As you know from reading my blog, I love pork.  It almost felt like it was my birthday.