Chocolate Covered Strawberries

 

For years I've had a recipe card in my collection that shows how to make cute chocolate covered strawberries that look like tuxedos. I've always wanted to make them but have never found the time or the desire to actually follow through on it. This time wasn't any different as you can see. I made these for a baby shower so I didn't think tuxedos were quite in line with the theme of the party.

The process really wasn't terribly difficult. I wanted to try to temper the chocolate because I thought they would look more polished if they were shiny. I have a difficult time tempering chocolate, so I did my best. You can't imagine how hard it is to get chocolate to a certain degree without it going past that. Near impossible, I say.

Once the chocolate was tempered and cooled a bit I got down to business. For most of the strawberries I ended up spearing them with a toothpick through the top so I could dip them down into the chocolate without ripping off the greens. It also gave something for them to lean against so that they didn't roll around while drying.

Eventually I ran out of toothpicks and ended up holding the larger berries by the greens in order to dip them in. It worked just about as well as the toothpicks so if you don't have any on hand you don't have to stress out about it.

The chocolate hardened pretty well just sitting on the pan at room temperature but I wanted to make sure that they stayed as fresh as possible for the baby shower the next afternoon. I researched the best way to store chocolate covered strawberries overnight and found out that if you put them in individual baking papers (like cupcake liners), put a sealed lid on it and stick them in the fridge they have the best chance. There is a bit of sweating that can happen from the chocolate taking on the water in the strawberries, so I was surprised when I took them out of the fridge the next morning and they looked absolutely perfect!

I placed them in the fridge at work and grabbed them back out that afternoon. Unfortunately that fridge had a different temperature setting, almost like a freezer, and the berries did a lot of sweating while sitting in there. They still tasted good but they had little beads of water on the chocolate and the chocolate was a bit wet where it was sitting in the paper liners. Oh well, all the guests enjoyed them and that is really what matters. Enjoy!