Food porn (no euphemism)

[danaeris]

Get some long-stemmed strawberries. After washing them, make sure they are really really dry. Any water in the chocolate will prevent it from setting.

Put a sheet of wax paper on a cookie sheet or similar surface and clear a space in your fridge.

Break your bottom layer of chocolate (I used milk chocolate) into little pieces. Put it in a microwaveable glass bowl.

Microwave on high for 30 s. Take out, and stir. Repeat until the chocolate is mostly melted (it should look a little chunky until you stir the chunks in). Stir a lot and try to heat it as little as possible.

Now, dip the strawberries in the chocolate. Some people like to give it a different angle for each layer; your choice. When you're done dipping a strawberry put it on the tray. When you're done with all of them, put them in the fridge for 30 minutes before proceeding to the next stage.

These milk chocolate covered strawberries are ready for their second dipping!


Melt the next phase the same way as above, minimizing the time spent in the microwave. I chose dark chocolate for this layer. If you're going for presentation, dip the strawberries on a different angle as the previous layer, or don't dip it as deeply, leaving some of the previous layer peeking out. Then put it in the fridge for another thirty minutes or so.

These double-layered chocolate covered strawberries are ready for their third layer!


For the last layer, you can dip again, or you can drizzle. I chose to drizzle white chocolate, but had trouble getting it to drizzle nicely. Tips on this would be appreciated.

The finished product:



I turned out not to have enough dark to dip the last three strawberries, so these ones got drizzled by dark and white, with only a full coating of milk chocolate. At the end, I had lots of white chocolate left over, so I dipped some dried apricots in them.

refrigerate for 30 minutes, and they should be set!

Problems I ran into:

1. Chocolate levels very quickly reached the point where I wasn't so much dipping as rolling; this was messy and made for disappointing presentation.
   
2. As mentioned above, my attempts at drizzling chocolate were a bit of a failure (if you look closely, there are big goops of both on the strawberries with drizzles). Perhaps the chocolates should be thinned with heavy cream or somesuch?

Ingredients:
remember, you'll need more of whichever you're using for the bottom layer, and less of the one(s) you're just drizzling.
19 long stem strawberries
1 300g lindt milk chocolate bar (barely enough for coating all 19)
1 100g lindt 70% cocoa dark chocolate bar (barely enough for the 15 I coated)
1 full package of chipits white chocolate chips (I used less than a third of the package)
lots of paper towels for drying the fruit!

Comments

[trowa-barton.livejournal.com]

Yum. Delicious.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Yum. I'm going downstairs to grate cheese now. We're going to eat really well tonight.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I like using a double boiler (or a smaller saucepan over a larger one, or even a large stainless mixing bowl over boiling water) for dipping because it stays nice and soft so one doesn't end up rolling -- unless the chocolate's almost gone, then I just give it and a spoon to deyo, or would if I did that very often. :)

[neuroptik.livejournal.com]

Oh, those are so pretty and look really yummy!

[polkamadness.livejournal.com]

I think you need to use white chocolate bark, not white chocolate chips in order to get it to melt well.

I mix my chocolate with canola oil (1 teaspoon to 3/4 cup chocolate) to make it melt better.

- Mark

[sunspiral.livejournal.com]

Those look delicious! Now, off to make Key Lime Things.

Thoughts from an Official Chocolate Scientist (or something)

[bluedaisy.livejournal.com]

Rather than drizzling, you can dip a fork in the chocolate and shake it across wax paper (much better than paper towels for drying).
It makes a really pretty, professional looking drizzle with none of the messy drips and drops of actually trying to drizzle.

Don't thin the chocolate with cream, or it will *never* get hard enough to stay pretty---you'll have ganache and not tempered chocolate.
(Which is, by the way, what your 30s/time microwave thing is doing---you're melting it just enough that not all of the crystalline structure is lost, so that it hardens to a tempered chocolate, rather than to the softer solid form. There are other ways, too, but Ariel swears by the microwave method. I prefer the double boiler, but its harder to do right)