Chocolate covered strawberries are a classic treat. The two go so well together. But when you see chocolate covered strawberries in the stores, they’re expensive. Fortunately, they’re super quick and easy to make on your own.
Wash The Strawberries
The first thing you need to do is wash your strawberries. I suggest using one cup of vinegar to eight cups of water to wash them. Let the strawberries sit in the vinegar and water for a few minutes, and stir them around a bit. Rinse and drain, then allow the strawberries to dry completely.
This should help keep your strawberries from spoiling too quickly. With chocolate on them, they may not sit around long at all, but why give them the chance? The vinegar should kill any spores on the fruit so that it lasts longer. This also works on blueberries and blackberries.
Make sure your strawberries are completely dry before you try to dip them in chocolate. It only takes a tiny bit of water to mess up your dipping chocolate. Check around the leaves to ensure that everything is dry.
I recommend using room temperature strawberries for dipping. Cold ones will make your chocolate solidify too quickly, both on the strawberries and in the dipping container.
You can remove the tops of the strawberries if you don’t want to deal with the leaves while dipping. If you do that, I suggest putting the strawberry on a skewer so that you can easily cover the entire strawberry. I usually leave the tops of the strawberries on.
Prepare The Chocolate And Toppings
Think about any decorations you want to put on your strawberries. I used some sprinkles I had on hand this time – not a lot as I didn’t want to interfere too much with the strawberry and chocolate flavor combination.
You can decorate your chocolate covered strawberries with sprinkles, drizzle with more chocolate, cover them in nuts or crushed Oreos, or whatever suits your mood.
If you’re dipping the strawberries into something after the chocolate, prepare a bowl of it.
Melt your chocolate with some coconut oil. You can use whichever kind of chocolate suits your needs. White chocolate works well for some uses, as does milk chocolate, but I prefer to use dark chocolate for the flavor.
Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper so that the strawberries have a place to dry after being dipped.
Hold each strawberry carefully by the leaves to dip them. This also allows you to dip the strawberries deeper into the chocolate without coating the leaves. Sometimes the leaves will pull off easily. When that happens, I toss the leaves. A skewer can be helpful for dipping these – just make sure you do something about the hole the skewer leaves. You can cover it with a bit more chocolate, but these ones may need to be eaten a bit faster than the strawberries that remained whole.
Dip each strawberry as far as you can into the chocolate without dipping the leaves. A spoon is helpful for pouring more chocolate onto the strawberry as the chocolate level gets too low to cover the strawberry by dipping alone.
Add the sprinkles or other toppings while the chocolate is still melted. I just dropped sprinkles onto these strawberries. If you want to roll your chocolate dipped strawberries in another topping, it may help to give it just a couple of minutes to dry so that the chocolate is still melted but not too runny. Runny chocolate will fall off the strawberries if you roll the strawberry in the toppings too quickly.
Do not allow the chocolate coating of the strawberries to touch as they dry on the parchment paper. You’ll have to break them apart if they do touch. Usually that leaves one strawberry with missing chocolate, and we can’t have that, now can we?
Once all of the strawberries have been dipped and decorated, place the baking sheet in the refrigerator. Let the chocolate solidify for at least a half hour to an hour before serving. Keep the chocolate covered strawberries in the refrigerator except when serving so they don’t go bad too quickly.
If you have leftover dipping chocolate, find a use for it. I dumped fresh blueberries into mine and stirred them around. That gave me a quick version of chocolate covered blueberries. Not as neatly done as the strawberries, as the blueberries were refrigerated and made the chocolate solidify too quickly as I stirred, but delicious nonetheless. The clumps of chocolate covered blueberries would not be an attractive presentation for guests, however. I’d have to do them more carefully for that.
If you love chocolate covered fruit, take a look at my Chocolate Covered Pineapple With Strawberries recipe. I serve that one frozen, which makes the pineapple taste amazing!
- 1 lb fresh strawberries
- 12 oz chocolate - chips or chopped
- 2 tsp coconut oil
- sprinkles or other toppings optional
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Make sure your strawberries are clean and dry. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.
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Melt chocolate and coconut oil in the microwave in 30 second increments, stirring between rounds. Continue until chocolate is smooth.
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Dip each strawberry into the chocolate while holding the leaves out of the chocolate.
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If sprinkles or other toppings are desired, add them after dipping in the chocolate.
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Place dipped strawberries on the parchment paper to dry. Keep them separate so the chocolate doesn't stick them together. Refrigerate at least 30-60 minutes before serving. Keep refrigerated.