Valentine's Day Chocolate Covered Strawberries
Happy (Almost) Valentine's Day! I wanted to share with you my recipe for Valentine's day, so I hope you enjoy! This is perfect for gifting friends, or even a romantic picnic ;)
Before we get started, I wanted to give a shoutout to some other Valentine’s day recipes that I saw around that would be perfect for Valentine’s day! Low-Fat Chocolate Chip Raspberry Quickbread Strawberry French Macarons Blackberry Thyme Baked Cheese
With so many yummy alternatives, I shall present to you, my Valentine’s day recipe!
Ingredients:
~4 handfuls of semi-sweet chocolate +~2 handfuls of semi-sweet chocolate (set aside) 1 small box of strawberries, washed. 1/2 c of red wine (optional) ~1 handful of butterscotch chips (optional)
As you can tell, I’m really casual with my measurements, and honestly, everything is how you prefer your strawberries to taste :) dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, anything is fine! Just make sure when you’re buying the chocolate that the ingredients don’t include a bunch of chemicals other than the chocolate/cocoa butter. This will make sure that your chocolate will be nice and smooth and not fall off the strawberry. I used Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips, in case you were wondering.
1. Wash and dry your strawberries! For the strawberries that you want to soak in wine for an interesting, sweet taste, cut the strawberry at the tip to allow for maximum soakage. I suggest soaking your strawberries for at least 3 hours, or even overnight! Anyways, I went ahead and exaggerated the cut this strawberry, but for most of them, you’ll be fine keeping the cuts closed :) This will be covered by the chocolate later, so don’t worry!
2. Let your strawberries dry off even more on their own, and meanwhile, get started on the chocolate :) Start off by boiling a pot of water, and once the water is boiling, put your bowl of 4 handfuls of chocolate in it (yes, with the bowl). What we’re trying to achieve is have the water heat up the bowl, hence melting the chocolate. DO NOT get water into your chocolate, because it will become very crusty and hard to work with. *Wear mittens for safety! Stir your chocolate until it becomes a really watery texture, and you feel almost no resistance as you stir. Once your chocolate is wayyy too hot to handle, carefully remove your bowl from your makeshift double boiler, and add the rest of the chocolate chips into your molten chocolate. Stir until everything is melted. Congratulations, you have successfully tempered your chocolate!
3. Here comes the messy and fun part! Dip your strawberries! Set them somewhere where they can harden. I suggest plastic wrap or wax paper, but I didn’t have any available, so I used aluminum foil… A lot of people like to dip their entire strawberry in, but I like just dipping the tip to keep more of the fruity, tangy taste. Regardless of how you like it, work quickly, because your chocolate will start to cake! If you are working with the wine-dipped chocolate, make sure you take them out and dry them INSIDE AND OUT prior to this step! Otherwise, the moisture will kill your chocolate :( And that is a big no-no.
4. You can eat them while they are still soft and not ready, or you can be good and wait for them to dry. Regardless of what tactic you end up using, do not put them in the fridge. The fridge will actually ruin all tempering you did to the chocolate, because it will expect itself to stay in a cooler environment, so they will melt at room temperature. Also, the fridge is not dry, so you will end up with soggy, broken chocolate coats :( And that would be a waste of time.
5. (Optional) I also melted the butterscotch chips using my makeshift boiler method, and used it as a secondary dip for my strawberries.
Try out the red-wine soaked strawberries and tell me how you like them? :)
Have a delicious day!
