One of mine and my husband’s favorite Valentine’s traditions is making chocolate covered strawberries and heart shaped pizzas the Sunday before Valentine’s day. We started it the year we were dating, and it’s become something I look forward to every year! Even though chocolate covered strawberries are pretty simple to make, I’ve learned through trial and error that with a few small changes, you can take your strawberries from amateur-looking (but still delicious) to professional! Here are a few easy tips for making the best chocolate covered strawberries this Valentine’s Day:
1. Use High Quality Ingredients
Your chocolate covered strawberries will only be as good as the ingredients you use. Be very selective when you are shopping for strawberries, and then only use the best ones from the carton. Look for juicy, red, and large strawberries for the best possible results! One helpful tip is to flip the strawberry carton over when you’re shopping. If you can see mushy or moldy berries at the bottom, they are already going bad and you should keep looking.
Secondly, use high quality chocolate! I like to use Guittard milk chocolate. It melts smoothly and doesn’t taste waxy like some brands of chocolate.
2. Wash and Dry Your Strawberries Thoroughly
Next, it’s important to wash and dry your strawberries completely before dipping. Any moisture on the strawberries will not only make your strawberries mushy, but it can contribute to unwanted condensation on your strawberries after they’re dipped! No bueno.
3. Melt Your Chocolate Completely
Melting your chocolate is a pretty easy step, but if it goes wrong it can go really wrong. Make sure you melt it enough that it’s completely smooth with no lumps, but be careful not to overdo it or your chocolate will taste burned. I find it’s helpful to melt the chocolate in the microwave in 30 second increments, stirring in between until it’s completely melted.
4. Dip in a Mug, Not a Bowl
For some reason, I always gravitated towards putting my chocolate in a bowl, until I learned there is a better way! Using a mug makes it much easier to immerse your strawberries completely in the chocolate because the chocolate is deeper, rather than being spread out.
5. Pull Back the Leaves
This might seem obvious, but be sure to pull the leaves back when dipping each strawberry so that you can cover as much of the surface area as possible. The more chocolate on the strawberry, the better it will look (and taste)!
6. Prop it Up
If you’ve ever made chocolate covered strawberries at home, you’re probably all too familiar with the pool of chocolate that forms at the bottom of the strawberry after you’ve dipped it and set it down to dry. There’s nothing wrong with the extra chocolate, but it definitely doesn’t look as good. To solve this, use bamboo skewers to dip your strawberries and then prop them up, either in a glass or a foam board until they are dry. The foam board is what the actual professionals use (i.e. not me), and is probably much easier, but requires a trip to the craft store!
7. Practice the Drizzle
If you choose to add a drizzle to your chocolate covered strawberries, make sure you have melted the white chocolate or candy melts thoroughly and practice on a sheet of parchment paper before you drizzle on the strawberries. You’ve come this far, so make sure you have gotten the drizzle down before diving in!
Hopefully these tips are helpful, but it’s really the memories that matter! Let me know if you add chocolate covered strawberries to your Valentine’s Day traditions this year!