Chocolate covered strawberries

Every year on my birthday, I buy strawberries. Having a birthday in February means I feel a little silly buying my favorite fruit in the middle of winter, but I figure, its my birthday, I can buy strawberries if I want. I don't know if I have a healthy relationship with buying food... I like to eat it, but not to spend money on it. Anyway, I have strawberries, and I have been enjoying them. Since it's my birthday, and I'm in Amherst but Ed's in Boston, he suggested that I bake myself a cake. That seemed like far too much work, but chocolate-covered strawberries was just the right amount of work. And far more delicious than a cake, anyway. It's true, there is a way to improve strawberries - dip them in good chocolate!


This took about five minutes, start to finish, thanks to a microwave. I used some of the KAF burgundy chocolate chunks, about a third of a cup, and put them into a pyrex measuring cup. I think in the future, a wider bowl would be better. Anyway, I microwaved the chocolate for one minute, but it wasn't starting to melt yet, so I did another 15 seconds. After that, I could stir it around, and it was beginning to melt, but it took another 15 seconds to really get gooey.

The strawberries were washed and dried and sitting on a towel ready for use. Since I didn't have any wax paper, I buttered a plate, and used that. I had meant to only dip 7 strawberries (I'm just one person, after all), but I had enough chocolate to do 12. And you can't let good chocolate go to waste!


Once the chocolate was all gooey, I stirred it up with a spoon some more, then removed the spoon, and commenced dipping.


The dipping was a fairly messy process, and involved a lot of finger-licking. I found if I rolled the strawberry through the chocolate, that worked best, although near the end, I was just using my index finger to paint the chocolate onto the berry.

After dipping, I put them on the plate, and the chocolate had hardened up pretty well before I was even done dipping the last berries. I've heard you can put them in the fridge, but clearly the house was cold enough they didn't need it.


End result: perfection. The perfect mix of sweet and bitter and sour, chewy and crunchy and soft and toothy. So good. So worth it. Happy birthday, me.