Super Sunday Snack

It's almost summer, which means that it is strawberry season. Talk a walk down your local farmer's market and you can't help but smell that lovely fragrance in the air. That smell of summer...the smell of super fresh, super ripe strawberries. So, since they're so delicious and such a good deal, you buy a lot of them and only realize after you're home that strawberries have a rather short shelf life. So what to do with them? Here's one idea that I've been working on perfecting the past few weeks (which has been working out very well for my friends and coworkers): chocolate covered strawberries. If you go to a chocolate shop, you may spend $1-$2 on these a piece. If you make them yourself, though, you can make make nearly 80 of them for roughly $12. And they really couldn't be easier.


First, you'll need some fresh strawberries. I do suggest going to a farmers market as they'll taste a million times better and be much much cheaper. The stall I go to sells a half flat (which is 6 little green baskets) for $7.


Next, you'll need chocolate. I don't usually endorse products that I sell at work when I'm off the clock, but if you go to Michaels, you can buy Wilton candy melts for about $2.50 a bag. These are very very easy to use.


Just pour some into a bowl and melt in the microwave on 50% power. Start with a minute, stir and keep heating at 30 second intervals until melted.


Once they're melted, simply dip in your strawberries and coat them evenly.


Once they're dipped, put them on a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil and stick them in the fridge for a minute or two while the chocolate hardens once again (another nice thing about the candy melts is that they harden once again rather quickly).


Now, if you like, you can eat and enjoy...or you can do one more step that I think makes them look really special. This is another very easy thing to do: drizzle the top with a different color candy melt. You could do this with a spoon, however I chose to use decorator bags. You can melt the chocolate right in the bag and then just snip the tip and squeeze the chocolate out.


Enjoy! I used about half of each bag of candy melts which made roughly 35 strawberries and still had over half of the strawberries left over to enjoy sans chocolate. So, if you use all the strawberries and chocolate, you can make quite a few. And as I said before, your friends and coworkers will enjoy your delicious snack as well (because I wouldn't suggest anyone eat 80 of them by herself).