Spike Your Sweets: Chocolate-Covered Amaretto Strawberries

Ingredients

For the strawberries:
– 4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature

– 2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar

– 1-2 tablespoons amaretto (can use 1-2 teaspoons almond extract for non-alcoholic version)

– 8 large fresh strawberries

– 1 cup chocolate chips

– 3 tablespoons heavy cream

– 1 tablespoon coconut oil

– 1 tablespoon Baileys Irish Cream (optional)

– toppings such as nuts, sugar or coconut (optional, but only recommended if not decorating for Easter)

– pastel frosting (either store-bought or homemade)

For homemade buttercream frosting:
– 1/2 cup butter, room temperature

– 3-4 tablespoons milk or half and half

– 1 pound confectioner’s sugar

– 1 teaspoon vanilla

– assorted food coloring

First, you’ll need to hull some strawberries. Of course, you could just use a paring knife, or a grapefruit spoon, or something already in your kitchen. But being obsessed with kitchen gadgets, we love busting out an officially strawberry huller.

To make the filling, mix up some room temperature cream cheese, amaretto, and powdered sugar.

Pipe the filling into the hollowed out strawberries using a pastry bag or a small Ziplock bag with the corner snipped off.

Refrigerate for 30-60 minutes so the cream cheese has a chance to firm back up. (Note: If you want to make these kid-friendly or alcohol-free, you can sub almond extract for the amaretto.)

For the chocolate, you should technically use a double boiler, but we were lazy, so we just stuck some chocolate chips, cream, Baileys and coconut oil in the microwave and heated on high until it was fully melted. (Ours took about 3 minutes, stopping every minute to stir).

Allow to cool slightly and dip each strawberry at an angle into the chocolate, give a swift turn (so cream cheese doesn’t ooze out) and place on a pan lined with parchment paper. If you want to sprinkle with chopped nuts or coconut, you can do that now while the chocolate is still wet. However, we wanted to decorate ours like Easter eggs, so we just stuck them into the fridge to set.

We had originally purchased some gel frosting tubes, but didn’t realize they were so… well… gel-ly. They didn’t show up AT ALL on the strawberries, so we made a basic buttercream frosting and colored them with food coloring to make my own Easter colors.

We used a bunch of Ziplock bags with the teeny-tiniest hole snipped off the corner to pipe out the frosting. (To be more precise, you might try a pastry bag fitted with very fine tips).

And then the fun part…decorating! Swirls, dots, stripes…let your imagination run wild. (In case you wondering, I was channeling my inner Jackson Pollock with that middle one). Happy Easter everyone!

What did you cook up this Easter Sunday? Any other spring treats we should add to our to-make list? Tell us in the comments below.