Chocolate Covered Strawberries - Make Your Own

Fresh Strawberries

Baking Chocolate

Colored Sprinkles

Crocants

This is a simple no frills recipe. In fact, it's not really a recipe. It's just what you need to have fun making chocolate covered strawberries. You should be able to find all these in your kitchen so you don't have to buy anything except the stuff you'll be eating.

• 12 ounces of semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips. You should find lots of variety in the baking section of your supermarket. Choose one that you like.


• 20 to 40 large ripe strawberries.


• Colored sugar sprinkles, fine sugar, crushed nuts or crocants (walnut kernels baked and covered with a thin layer of sugar.)


• Wooden toothpicks or desert forks.

Optional : You can add any flavoring coffee, vanilla, rose essence etc to the chocolate to suit your taste, but my kids like chocolate plain and straight.

If you're looking for chocolate recipes for fondues, here are some :

• "Hot" Fondue Chocolate
• Chocolate Peanut Butter Fondue
• Chocolate Peanut Butter Fondue
• Cinnamon and Chocolate Fondue
• Chocolate Honey Fondue
• Sugar Free Chocolate Fondue
• Chocolate Orange Fondue
• Marshmallow Chocolate Fondue

You can replace strawberries with practically any other fruit : apple slices, kiwi chunks, banana slices, pineapple chunks, pear slices, orange sections, seedless grapes etc. And it doesn't even have to be fruits. You could use veggies, marshmallow, sweet cookies and cake!

Preparing everything in advance means less of a mess. Believe me... kids and liquid chocolate always equals MESS.

• See if you can find a piece of styrofoam (the white stuff that pads electronic gadget in the packaging). This comes in handy after you've dipped the strawberries in the chocolate and want to stand it up to harden for a bit. Alternatively, you could line a tray with waxed paper.


• Dry your strawberries. If you use refrigerated strawberries, leave them out at room temperature for 30 minutes before you dry them. You want the strawberries dry because excessive moisture or condensation on the strawberries might make it more difficult for the chocolate coating to stay on.


• Poke each strawberry with your toothpicks or desert fork

There are a couple of ways to melt your chocolate. You basically want a low consistent heat so that your chocolate doesn't burn (which can easily happen) but hot enough to keep the chocolate in a thick liquid state.

If you have one, a slow cooker is great because the cooker keeps everything at a set temperature.

You can also improvise your own double boiler (which is what we normally do) by placing a steel bowl over a small pot of hot water. Try to find a bowl with a bottom that will fit snugly - you don't want the whole bowl floating on the water.

If small children are dipping the strawberries with you, then you'll want to take the pot (together with the bowl) off of the stove and place it on a heat placemat. If the chocolate starts to get a bit too sticky (hard), you'll need to re-heat the water.

My kids' chocolate strawberries masterpieces.

This is the part kids love (second only to eating their finished artwork).

Holding each strawberry by the toothpick, dunk it into the chocolate, and while it's in, give it a twirl to make sure the chocolate covers the whole strawberry. Then take it out.

While the chocolate is still soft, sprinkle your sugar sprinkles, crushhed nuts, and crocants on. Remember that you can use ANY coating you like.

If you have the styrofoam ready, poke the other end of the toothpick into it making the strawberry "stand". Allowing them to stand this way makes sure the chocolate coating retains an even shape all around.

Put your chocolate covered strawberries in the refridgerator for about 10-15 minutes to harden the chocolate coating.

Image by Mirka

Image by Paul Raferty Evans

Image by tjhanton

Image by Glorious Treats

Here's some ideas how you can sweeten someone's day with your chocolate strawberries :

• Have fun on a rainy day making chocolate strawberries with your kids and then enjoying them over a nice cup of what else... chocolate.


• Make a batch as a gift for your sweetie, then enjoy them together under a tree.


• Serve them on a plate with breakfast in bed to your wife on her birthday or mother's day.


• Make them with your kids and send them over to the nearest elderly care home.


• Whip up a batch for grandma and grandpa.


• Make a small chocolate strawberry gift basket for that pretty girl you've been working up the courage to say "Hi" to.

Image by qwrrty
Image by Brandon Shigeta

Check out the prices of chocolate strawberries above. Those treats average $40 for a dozen chocolate strawberries. That's about $3 a pop!

If you've perfected your chocolate strawberries and you're ready to make some money, here's a couple of chocolatey ideas :

• Sell your chocolate strawberries at your morning market


• Supply chocolate strawberries to your local grocery store.


• Advertise and deliver your chocolate strawberries as a gift.


• Supply chocolate strawberries as a desert treat to catering companies

If you're interested in food as a business, check out this site for more ideas on making money.