I love strawberries and whipped cream. Give it to me on a waffle, add some ice cream, chocolate sauce....whatever you've got. It's one of my most favorite pairings. I almost always have a bag or two of frozen strawberries in the freezer, I like to randomly buy things like this when I have a little more wiggle room in my food budget to boost my pantry power during the slim times. Today I looked outside my window to see that I have a flat tire on my car. So it's walk or bus this week, and I'm lazy. So when the sweet tooth craving kicked in I went to creating in the kitchen.
I had some left over sweetened condensed milk that I knew I needed to get rid of, and I was going through the possibilities of what I could do with it. Normally my brain goes to chocolate first, however I don't even have any cocoa powder, let alone baking chocolate or chocolate chips.
I thought I might be able to whip up the sweetened condensed milk...about four minutes with the immersion blender told me NO. So I decided to soften up the 1/4 cup (or so, who knows, really) of the cream cheese and add about three to four tablespoons of the sweetened condensed milk, and whip this with a little drizzle of vanilla extract. It took on a nice sweet, rich cheesecake flavor, but it wasn't too thick so it would work well as a sauce or a really heavy glaze.I still had about a half of a can of the sweetened condensed milk and I remember seeing or hearing something, somewhere about slowly heating the sweetened sticky stuff until it turned to really good caramel, or Dulce de Leche. (next time I'll take the advice of one of the two links posted on how to!) So I stuck the rest of it in a tiny non stick saucepan and got to boiling. 
I heated it too quickly and the bottom turned very brown and clumpy. After whipping it for a while and keeping it on much lower heat, it eventually turned a nice shade of brown. I may play with this more, as the finished product wasn't very pliable or smooth. It was, however delicious. So I was equipped with a cheesecake-like cream cheese sauce and a chunky caramel sauce. I'd thought I'd make some sort of ...cake? to top it with. But then I realized I had frozen biscuits in the freezer. Now this is something I've fought with for the past year or so. I can't make biscuits. I've tried, I've made lumpy tasteless ones, super salty flaky ones, and burnt flat ones. I hate that I can't make them, and I plan to continue my experiments, but for now I have found a decent replacement. The 'Southern Style' Pillsbury Biscuits from the freezer are the only frozen or refrigerated dough I've had that doesn't have that....refrigerated dough taste I hate. I don't know what causes that taste, but I hate it. HATE IT. So I decided to play the strawberry shortcake angle, and biscuits were browned! To quick
ly thaw the strawberries, which I always buy unsweetened, I put them in a large skillet on low heat and snipped the still frosty berries into slices, sprinkling with a few pinches of sugar when I'd finished just to draw the water away from the berries and make a nice tart juice to counter the EXTREMELY sweet and rich caramel and cheesecake sauces. At this point Marco drifted into the kitchen to see what I was up to. He sneered at the cheesecake-y sauce, he sniffed at the caramel, and he couldn't fathom how sweet things would go on a biscuit. "You know what REALLY goes good on a biscuit, Gravy." my pouty little husband said, disappointed that there was no chocolate. Then he ate one, and then he ate another one, and he marveled at how good they were. This was the seconds! 
A fun little aside, I have four cats, and two of the cats wanted the cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk very, very badly. Every time I turned my back Loki would attem
pt to steal things from me, and Squeak decided that he was my best friend and was constantly under my feet. This is normally not normal behavior for Squeak, as he's somewhat of a loner cat. Loki is normally a kitchen companion, but she's not normally as bold as she was today. Here are my two little helpers I had to shoo from the kitechen about twelve times in the short time I was cooking. Loki's the one trying to be cute and unassuming, Squeak is licking his lips and meowing at the same time for a share of the booty. I don't know what I'd ever do without my constant kitten companions.
I heated it too quickly and the bottom turned very brown and clumpy. After whipping it for a while and keeping it on much lower heat, it eventually turned a nice shade of brown. I may play with this more, as the finished product wasn't very pliable or smooth. It was, however delicious. So I was equipped with a cheesecake-like cream cheese sauce and a chunky caramel sauce. I'd thought I'd make some sort of ...cake? to top it with. But then I realized I had frozen biscuits in the freezer. Now this is something I've fought with for the past year or so. I can't make biscuits. I've tried, I've made lumpy tasteless ones, super salty flaky ones, and burnt flat ones. I hate that I can't make them, and I plan to continue my experiments, but for now I have found a decent replacement. The 'Southern Style' Pillsbury Biscuits from the freezer are the only frozen or refrigerated dough I've had that doesn't have that....refrigerated dough taste I hate. I don't know what causes that taste, but I hate it. HATE IT. So I decided to play the strawberry shortcake angle, and biscuits were browned! To quick
ly thaw the strawberries, which I always buy unsweetened, I put them in a large skillet on low heat and snipped the still frosty berries into slices, sprinkling with a few pinches of sugar when I'd finished just to draw the water away from the berries and make a nice tart juice to counter the EXTREMELY sweet and rich caramel and cheesecake sauces. At this point Marco drifted into the kitchen to see what I was up to. He sneered at the cheesecake-y sauce, he sniffed at the caramel, and he couldn't fathom how sweet things would go on a biscuit. "You know what REALLY goes good on a biscuit, Gravy." my pouty little husband said, disappointed that there was no chocolate. Then he ate one, and then he ate another one, and he marveled at how good they were. This was the seconds! 
A fun little aside, I have four cats, and two of the cats wanted the cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk very, very badly. Every time I turned my back Loki would attem
pt to steal things from me, and Squeak decided that he was my best friend and was constantly under my feet. This is normally not normal behavior for Squeak, as he's somewhat of a loner cat. Loki is normally a kitchen companion, but she's not normally as bold as she was today. Here are my two little helpers I had to shoo from the kitechen about twelve times in the short time I was cooking. Loki's the one trying to be cute and unassuming, Squeak is licking his lips and meowing at the same time for a share of the booty. I don't know what I'd ever do without my constant kitten companions. 
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