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2/14/11

How to make chocolate covered strawberries at home

Last Friday, my coworker (hi, Chris!) told me that he was going to buy a chocolate covered strawberry at Godiva for his fiance, but Godiva was going to charge him $7. SEVEN dollars for ONE strawberry!!! Can you believe that? Yes,  I realize it's probably because of something called Valentine's Day, but that's just a robbery in my eyes, especially when making chocolate covered strawberries at home is relatively easy.

How do you make chocolate covered strawberries at home? Read on!

Lucky for me, this weekend Harris Teeter had strawberries and chocolate on sale! Two boxes of strawberries for $4.99 and two packages of Ghirardelli chocolate chips for $5.00! That means you can make about 50 strawberries for $10.00 and still have some chocolate left over.

Ingredients
25 strawberries
1/2 bag (or about 6 ounces) Ghirardelli Premium Baking 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate chips {I realize that many of you will tell me I should have used bars of chocolate, but chips are just so much easier for me. Of course you can choose whichever chocolate type/brand/variety you like!}
1/3 cup white chocolate chips



Directions
1. Set up a double boiler: put a little bit of water in a pan, bring it to a simmer. Put a metal bowl on top, making sure it doesn't touch the water. Add your dark chocolate and stir using a spatula till it melts. Take it off the heat. {If you have a microwave, I decided not to buy one since my new condo didn't come with it, you can melt your chocolate in a microwave.}
2. Dip your strawberries. I used toothpicks. Scroll below to see how that turned out!
3. Set your strawberries on parchment paper. {Note: I found it rather difficult to peel off the strawberries from the parchment. I also used wax paper with the same result. What worked best, was to pop them in the refrigerator for about 10-15 minutues.}


4. After the chocolate hardens, give it about 45 minutes, melt the white chocolate. Add it to a Ziploc bag, cut the tip and drizzle over the strawberries.

You'd think this would be easy, right? WRONG. The chocolate began to harden almost as soon as I put it in the bag. And it was really hot! I ended up using a kitchen towel to hold the bag and drizzled as many strawberries as I could.


5. Let the white chocolate harden. This would only take about 10-15 minutes.



So what did I do with all these strawberries? Well, I ate a few. Or maybe a bit more than a few. But I left the rest of them for Sunday (yesterday) because I had some of my friends come over. According to SassyRadish, I was supposed to leave them out covered with a towel. But to me it seemed a bit dangerous. So I put them in the refrigerator over night.


Wrong! Don't do it. The berries start to release some of the juices as they sit in the fridge and it's just not pretty. Plus, I probably should not have used toothpicks....as that too allowed the moisture to be released. They still looked ok, and tasted ok, but ok is not good enough when you have people coming over.


So I went back to the store, bought more strawberries and dipped those in dark chocolate sans toothpicks and sans white chocolate. {The photos in here are of the ones I made on Saturday prior to refrigeration.}


Lessons learned:
Don't use toothpicks.
Don't use white chocolate unless you really love it.
Make these the day you'll serve them.
Don't pop them in the fridge, unless you do so only for about 15 minutes to harden the chocolate before serving it.


If you are celebrating Valentine's Day, enjoy it!!!!

{PS it was just brought to my attention that I spelled "tomato" wrong in all of the watermarks in this post...oops! I'm just going to leave them the way they are, but luckily can change it for the next 3 posts. Thanks Dusty!!}

12 comments:

Kathleen said...

Very cool! Decided to blog about this recipe today.
http://steeler-gal-thoughts.blogspot.com/2011/02/say-it-with-chocolate-and-strawberries.html

sally said...

Yum! These look just as good as the Godiva strawberries!

Unknown said...

Beautifully done! Godiva is definitely yummy, but they are super overpriced.
*kisses* HH

The Duo Dishes said...

$7!?#@?! Get out of here! If only people knew (or cared) that they were getting ripped off. Looks like you have treats to enjoy today. :)

Victoria said...

They look beautiful - and thanks for the tip on storage :)

Delicious Dishings said...

I can't believe Godiva charges that much... well, I can... but that's ridiculous. Yours look a whole lot prettier!

White chocolate tip -- melt bars not chips... and make sure cocoa butter is listed in the ingredients. The chips have stabilizers in them so they just seize right back up when you melt them.

Leslie said...

$7 for ONE strawberry. THAT IS CRAZY! Its so simple to do at home. Crazy simple!

Heidi, Angel, Arlene, Trena, & Julie said...

I made my own too. Instead of chocolate chips I used Merckens coating wafers in dark coco and white chocolate. I melt them in the microwave and it's easy peasy!

Jackie at Phamfatale.com said...

So easy and delicious! The white chocolate drizzling adds that little oomph to the fruits. Beautiful! Hope you had a lovely Valentine's Day!

Medeja- CranberryJam said...

Such strawberries with champagne.. what could be nicer for Valentine's day :)

Juliana said...

I haven't made this for a while, yours turned out very nice...hope you had a nice V day!

Anonymous said...

Hello, I found your blog off Google. I too had the same experience the first time. Since then I have found a few tricks and now it is so easy. At Hobby Lobby they have a 2lb bag of milk chocolate chip melts for $5.99. They also carry microwaveable melting trays, 3 for about $3-$4. You fill the tray up with chips and microwave for 30 sec stir and microwave again. This step usually takes 3-4 times. Then dip the strawberries and place on wax paper. I cool the strawberries first that way they harden faster plus pull off easier. They taste awesome!!