Chocolate Stuffed Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Dessert is by far my favorite pat of any meal. Coincidentally, making dessert is also one of my favorite past times. And since today is one of my student's birthdays, I decided that today is a great day to make a delicious treat.

However, since the weather has been heating up and I was a little pressed for time, I was both too hot and too lazy to heat up the oven to make a baked treat. My solution? Chocolate covered strawberries stuffed with chocolate truffles. Yum! 

I might have snacked on a piece or two during the process, but I couldn't resist. There's still plenty for everyone! So let me share with you how I made this very tempting treat. 

You will need: 

1 package of double stuffed Oreos 

2 chocolate pudding cups

1 8 oz. package of creamed cheese

optional: 1 cup of mini chocolate chips 

32 oz. of strawberries 

I got excited just looking at all this stuff! 

Procedure: 

1. Wash your strawberries thoroughly. Cut off the tops of the strawberries. 

2, Use a small but sharp knife to take out the core of the strawberries. 

3. Put that aside and open the package of Oreos. I got the double stuffed kind because that just sounds more festive. Break a few Oreos and then put them in a food processor and grind them until they become fine crumbs. My food processor is a small one, so it took me two or three rounds of processing, but it got the job done, so that's what counts. 

4. In a large bowl, cream together the creamed cheese and Oreo crumbs until it almost resembles dough. If you want, add a cup (or less, depending on how much or how little chocolate chips you want) of chocolate chips and stir until everything is well combined. 

5. Very carefully start stuffing your cored strawberries with the creamed cheese mixture. This is going to be most easily done with your hands. 

6. Put the delicious chocolate stuffed strawberries in the freezer for 20 minutes. When you take them out, cover the tops of the strawberries with a generous helping of chocolate pudding.

7. Toss those puppies back in the freezer for another 30 - 40 minutes. Some of the pudding might fall off, but that's why we put a generous helping of pudding on top of the strawberries before we put them in the freezer. 

8. Take them out of the freezer and enjoy! 

These treats are very delicious, and it's helpful that they're cold. Perfect for a nice hot summer day! :) 

Next Bev Up: Lemonade

In case you haven't noticed, I've been on a beverage kick lately. I know it's really important to make sure you drink a good amount of water every day, but sometimes water just gets boring. So I need to change it up. Granted, my alternatives do tend to be a little unhealthier than water, but I can't help it. Plus, I still make sure I drink at least 5 cups of just water every day (yes, I know. That's nowhere close to enough water, but I'm working on it).

Today, in the midst of spring, the weather here in New Jersey is actually cooler than I'd like. In fact, some parts of New Jersey got snow the other day! In April! I'm not a fan of cold weather, so I keep my fingers crossed for this cold weather nonsense to end. I added to my self-delusion today by making myself a nice cold glass of lemonade. (Actually, it's still in the process of getting made as I type up this blog, but I decided to write about it anyway).

So here's what I did:

INGREDIENTS:

1 lemon
2 Tbsp. honey
2 Tbsp. brown sugar (or white sugar, if you prefer)
1 cup + 8 tbsp. water (the 8 tbsp. will be for the syrup)

PROCEDURE:

1. On the stove, heat up the honey, sugar, and 8 tablespoons of water in a small skillet. It doesn't need to come to a boil; it just needs to be warm enough to dissolve the sugar completely. Give it a couple stirs at the end to really make sure the water's dissolved.

2. Put the syrup in the fridge to chill.

3. While the syrup is chilling, cut a lemon and squeeze the juice into a cup. I personally like my lemonade to be very lemony, so one whole lemon is a good amount  for me. However, if you don't like your lemonade as lemony, you can use a little less. Adjust according to your taste.

4. Check on the syrup. For me, the syrup wasn't done chilling yet, so I spent some time cleaning up the kitchen and stuff. Then I wet a paper towel with cold water, wrapped the wet paper towel around the cup, and then stuck that in the fridge too. I know there's not really anything in the cup other than the juice of the lemon, but I really like my lemonade cold, so I figured, the colder the cup, the better I'll enjoy it.

5. Once the syrup is chilled enough for your liking, take it out of the fridge. I also took the cup with lemon juice out of the fridge and filled it up with water. Add a bit of syrup to the lemonade. WARNING: The syrup is very sweet. Don't be too tempted to just dump the whole thing in at once without trying it little by little first. You can always save any leftover syrup for the next cup of lemonade.

6 Enjoy your lemonade! :)

X

Today's Breakfast Beverage: Chocolate Milk!

Am I the only one who still gets pretty excited about making my own chocolate milk? I mean, here I am, a grown woman, and the second my mom buys a big thing of unsweetened cocoa powder, the first thing I want to do is make a tall glass of chocolate milk.

I mentioned in my previous blog post that I recently found a way to make extremely delicious coffee with cocoa in it. Well, this morning, I made some tasty chocolate milk. The first time I tried to make chocolate milk, it was a bit of a failure. The cocoa powder floated to the surface in clumps and made the whole experience pretty dissatisfying. So today, I mixed some cocoa with some sugar and then slowed down the whole "add milk" process. The result: chocolate milk that I gulped down within five minutes! It was so great I just had to take to the internet and share.

Ingredients:

1 cup  milk
1 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp brown sugar

Procedure:

1. Mix the cocoa powder and brown sugar together. You can use white sugar instead, but my family has been on a health kick and my mom is convinced that switching from white to brown sugar will be the solution to our unhealthy sweet tooth habits.

2. Pour about a quarter cup of milk into the cocoa-sugar mixture. Really stir that mixture. I'm talking stir it hard. You might see floating clumps; I did. So I zapped it in the microwave for 10 seconds, just long enough to warm it up a bit but not long enough to make the milk uncomfortably hot.

3. Continue stirring until most or all of the clumps are gone. When that happens, pour in the rest of your milk. Stir again, and you should have a relatively clump-free glass of chocolate milk. You may still have a little clump or two in your glass, but because it's been mixed with sugar, it's actually not so bad.

4. Enjoy your chocolate milk and maybe reminisce about the good ol' days when you raced into the kitchen every morning to a glass of chocolate milk that your parents made for you.