Chocolate-Covered Strawberries

Strawberries were on sale at the grocery store, and I got a little overzealous.

Like that time I went apple-picking:

I have a tendency to buy more fruit than I can reasonably eat. Luckily, the amount I can reasonably eat increases tenfold when I dip the fruit in chocolate.

Ingredients

Strawberries. Or: pretzels, marshmallows, banana…

Bittersweet chocolate.

Make It

Rinse the strawberries well and then pat dry with a paper towel. The drier they are, the better the chocolate will stick. What you really want is for the chocolate to form a shell that snaps open when you bite down. For this you need decent quality chocolate. I’ll touch on that in a second here.

Heat up the chocolate in a double boiler. If you don’t have a double boiler, use the microwave at 50% power, stirring every thirty seconds until your chocolate is melted. Although I am a little in love with my double boiler…

Grab your strawberry by the green part (Stem? No. Leaves? Erm, kinda.) and dip into the chocolate, swirling a bit to coat all sides. You want the top third uncovered, because it looks nice and because it’s easier to handle. For the sake of presentation, you should probably just eat all the ones that fall all the way in and have to be fished out with a spoon…

Place the dipped berries on a parchment paper sheet and let dry in the fridge for an hour or so.

Now, a word on chocolate: I swear by Ghirardelli’s bittersweet chocolate chips. The Nestle stuff, or the supermarket brands, aren’t high enough quality and they just sort of gum on the strawberry, so you don’t get that crispness. They also don’t taste particularly good– and this is chocolate, people! It’s an indulgence, so it should be tasty. That said, I don’t think it’s worth springing for Lindt or more expensive stuff for baking– I guess Ghirardelli just hits my threshold for chocolatey excellence.

What sort of chocolate do you like to bake with?