This Chocolate Covered Strawberry Dessert Ball is perfect for your Easter or Spring parties. I’m honored to be a PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese Ambassador this year, sharing delicious recipes including this cheese ball.

I melt for chocolate covered strawberries. Turn that into a dessert dip, and I’m toast…or crackered…or graham crackered? I digress. What I’m meaning to say is that this dip is just delicious and perfectly creamy! It’s full of fresh strawberries, mini chocolate chips and cream cheese.

While tasting it (it’s a tough job being a food blogger), all I could think about was an amazing blend between a cheesecake, strawberry butter cookie and chocolate covered strawberry.

Yeah, you pretty much cannot go wrong with this.

The dip began as a chocolate chip covered cheese dessert ball, but without freezing the ball, it was challenging to handle. It wasn’t unmanageable, as you can see below, but for those who get frustrated in the kitchen, I highly recommend skipping the ball and going straight to the dip.

Either way, it tastes amazing and is the perfect addition to your Easter dinner! When thinking about what you’re going to serve, just follow this little guide:

I usually serve vegetarian meals, hence why I landed on this dip for our Easter celebration. Since I only want to serve my family the best, I always use PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese…and this dip has two bricks of the 1/3 fat PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese. Here are more reasons I love PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese:

• Fresh Local Milk and Real Wholesome Cream – PHILADELPHIA uses milk sourced from dairy farmers local to where the cream cheese is made and combines it with real, wholesome cream to create a delicious cream cheese.
• From Farm to Our Fridge in Just Six Days – Fresh milk from nearby farms is made into cream cheese and refrigerated at PHILADELPHIA creameries in just six days.
• Limited use of preservatives – No preservatives are found in the original  PHILADELPHIA cream cheese brick varieties.
• Real Ingredients – From real jalapeños in its Spicy Jalapeño cream cheese spread to crunchy pecans in its Honey Nut cream cheese spread, PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese provides many delectable varieties to choose from.

Need I say more? Okay, who’s ready for strawberry season? Our local farm just opened their U-pick fields. I can’t wait to take Liam picking…and eating. 😉 Then, we’ll just have to come back home and make another batch of this dip.

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Dessert Ball or Cheesecake Dip

adapted from Mom on Timeout

Ingredients

• 16 ounces PHILADELPHIA 1/3 less fat cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup fresh strawberries, washed, hulled and puréed
• 1 cup mini chocolate chips

How-To

1. Beat the cream cheese and butter together. Slowly beat in the powdered sugar. Beat in the vanilla and strawberry purée.
2. (Dip Option) Stir in the chocolate chips, place in a bowl and refrigerate until ready to serve.
3. (Cheese Ball Option) Pour into a plastic wrap covered bowl and refrigerate for one hour (or freeze for 20 minutes or until hard enough to work with).
4. Layout another sheet of plastic wrap and sprinkle 1/2 cup of the chocolate chips onto the plastic wrap. Remove the ball from it’s plastic wrap and roll onto the chocolate chips. Sprinkle the top of the ball with the remaining chocolate chips.
5. Wrap the chocolate covered ball in the plastic wrap and place in the bowl. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

This post was sponsored by PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese and Kraft. I am a PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese brand ambassador because I truly believe in their products. I received compensation for this post and posts to follow. All opinions are my own. Please read my disclosure policy for further information.