Make Valentine’s Day Extra Special With Homemade Chocolate-Covered Strawberries
MY KIDS YEARLY VALENTINE TREAT
One of my favorite things to do for my kids is make them chocolate-covered strawberries for Valentine's Day. These look professionally done...right? If I can do it...so can you. Besides being a healthier choice, it's also cheaper than buying boxes and boxes of chocolates!
INGREDIENTS
- White Chocolate baking chips
- Milk Chocolate baking chips
- Dark Chocolate baking chips
- Sprinkles
- 2 pounds of strawberries
- Wax paper
- Optional: white, silver, or Valentine cupcake wrappers
DIRECTIONS
1. Rinse your strawberries in a strainer, and let air dry, or pat dry with a clean paper towel. (DO NOT remove the stems, as this adds to the beauty of the presentation; and that's what you need to hang on to while dipping the strawberries).
2. I use two large cookie sheets and place wax paper on each sheet. It's important to have the paper because as the dipped strawberries cool, it's easier to peel them off the wax paper than just a plain cookie sheet.
3. Pour your sprinkles into a small bowl.
The key to dipping strawberries is to do it quickly.
4. Decide which chocolate you want to dip the strawberries in first, and heat your chips for about 2 minutes in the microwave.
5. Remove and stir, putting it back in the microwave for 30 seconds at a time until the chocolate is smooth.
6. Remove from the microwave and give it one final stir.
7. I usually dip one pound of strawberries in milk or dark chocolate, and the other pound in white chocolate. It makes for a beautiful display when you're ready to serve.
HOW TO DIP THE BERRIES
Grab your dry strawberries by the stem, and dip them straight down into the chocolate mixture. The chocolate should be smooth. Make sure you cover the entire strawberry; let the extra chocolate drip off, and then immediately place it on the wax paper. Continue this process quickly until your pound of strawberries is covered.
SPRINKLES
Sprinkle the berries while they are still partially wet, or you can pick up the chocolate-covered berry and roll it in the sprinkle mixture quickly and then place it back on the wax paper to complete drying.
Heat the other chocolate, the same way as explained above, and dip the other pound of strawberries in the chocolate mixture. Again, it's important to work quickly.
ADDING FANCY STRIPING
If your white chocolate is still melted, take a fork, dip it in the white chocolate, and quickly wave the fork back and forth over your dark chocolate-covered strawberries to create the beautiful stripes you see above.
If you purchased dark chocolate, you could now heat that up, dip your fork in it, and quickly wave the fork back and forth over any strawberries that you want to have dark chocolate stripes.
Get Creative. I've seen people use silver and gold sprinkles, which look beautiful.
Once they are cooled, you can get some cupcake holders, and place them in whatever container you want to use to display your strawberries.
Then place the strawberries in the cupcake holders. With a little practice, you can pick up speed, and things will go much smoother. I think I completed all of my strawberries from beginning to end in about 1 1/2 hours.
Happy Valentine's Day!
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