Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries

There are three main food-related things that I look forward to every summer.  First - summer tomatoes.  They are so much more flavorful than when you buy them in the winter, and they taste even better when you grow them in your own garden!  Second - peaches.  There is nothing better than enjoying a sweet, ripe summer peach on a hot summer day....I will take peaches over watermelon any time!  Third - strawberries.  Sure you can get decent strawberries year-round, but I just feel like strawberries taste sweeter (and better) during the summer months. 

Anyways, this summer is flying by, and I think strawberries have been on my grocery list almost every week for the past couple of months.  While they are delicious on their own, I wanted to use them to make some kind of simple dessert for my family to enjoy while we were at the lake a few weeks ago.  I thought about making some chocolate covered strawberries, but ehhh....I've done that before and wanted something new.

After searching the internet for ideas, I found a winner!  When I saw a recipe for cheesecake stuffed strawberries on The Novice Chef blog (which happens to be a fabulous cooking blog), I knew that I had to make these.  Strawberries and cheesecake go together perfectly, and I knew these would be super good.  Well, they were amazing, and they are such a great idea - try these!

Ingredients:

2 crates of fresh strawberries
1 box of Jello No-Bake Cheesecake, prepared using box directions (basically just beat a cup and a half of milk with the cheesecake mix using an electric mixer for a few minutes - you can also use your own homemade cheesecake filling, but this was super quick and delicious)
Crushed graham cracker crumbs (if you use the Jello No-Bake Cheesecake, graham cracker crumbs are included, and I just used those)

Directions:

First, wash your strawberries and cut off the tops.  Hollow out the inside of the strawberries so that there is some room for the cheesecake filling (I used the tip of a potato peeler for this, but you could also just use a small paring knive). 

Put your prepared cheesecake filling into a large ziploc bag (you could use a pastry bag for this, but I don't have those so ziplocs work perfectly fine).  Cut the tip off one of the corners of the ziploc bag, and squeeze out the cheesecake filling to fill the inside of each strawberry until it is slightly overflowing.

Last, dip the top of each strawberry into the graham cracker crumbs.

You can definitely make these a little bit in advance, but don't make them more than 24 hours in advance or they will be a little bit soggy.  I made these around lunchtime, and they tasted perfect when we had them for dessert after eating dinner that night.  I liked them so much, I made them again for a family party we hosted a couple weeks later :)