Character stroke in Illustrator v11

What I want to do is retain the full fill area of the character but give it
a contrasting color edge.

In Corel Draw I could set the stroke to 2x the desired stroke and select the
"Behind Fill" option. That would cause the actual fill to shave off the
inner half of the stroke leaving the fill area unobscured.

I know I could create two identical character strings and place the stroke
on the background string (with no stroke on the foreground string) to get a
similar effect but it seems as though there has to be a better way without
resorting to such measures.

Is there a way to get a stroke behind the character's fill? If so, how 'bout
a clue?