Friend Friday: Summertime is for Strawberries!

For today’s Friend Friday, we are sharing our favorite seasonal dish.  My favorite is one that is best made whenever strawberries are in season, which is really anytime of the year.  One of my signature dishes is making cheesecake.  But I feel like for the summer, it’s a bit too hot to use the oven.  I searched the world-wide web and found this fresh and light alternative, and I have been making this dish for around 4 years now (original recipe found here).  I’ll do a step-by-step demo of this sometime soon.  Have a great weekend!

Strawberry Cheesecake Trifle

• Prep Time: 20 min.
• Cook Time: None
• Serves: 14

Ingredients

• 2 pints fresh strawberries, sliced
• 1 cup sugar, divided
• 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
• 3 tablespoons orange juice
• 3 cups whipping cream, whipped (or 1 tub of Cool Whip)
• 1 (10.75 ounce) loaf frozen pound cake, thawed and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
• 3 (1 ounce) squares semisweet chocolate, grated
• Chocolate curls (optional)
• Additional strawberries (optional)

Cooking Directions

1. In a bowl, toss strawberries with 1/2 cup sugar; set aside.
2. In a mixing bowl, beat cream cheese, orange juice and remaining sugar until smooth. Fold in the whipped cream; set aside.
3. Drain strawberries, reserving juice; set the berries aside. Gently toss cake cubes with reserved juice. Place half of the cake in a 4-qt. trifle dish or serving bowl. Top with a third of the cream cheese mixture, half of the strawberries and half of the grated chocolate. Repeat layers. Top with remaining cream cheese mixture. Garnish with chocolate curls and strawberries if desired. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

Note:  Instead of using a 4 qt trifle dish or serving bowl, you can also use a 2 inch deep serving dish/pan and put the layer of pound cake cubes on the bottom, spread the cream cheese mixture on top of the cake, and add the strawberries to the top.

(Image courtesy of Taste of Home)

Fashion Beauty Friend Friday is a Google group for bloggers to converse on a given topic each week. Katy from ModlyChic sends the questions, bloggers post their responses and then add their post to the list of people sharing their thoughts on the subject matter. To get started, check out this great tutorial on Grit & Glamour here.