Secrets to Perfect Chocolate Dipped Strawberries

Probably the most quintessential pairing of fruit and chocolate known to man is the chocolate covered strawberry. That combination of sweet chocolate and fresh juicy berry is magic in the mouth!

With only two ingredients they seem simple enough to make-dip a strawberry in chocolate and let it harden.  Well, that’s sort of it.  If you dip a strawberry in chocolate by definition you do have a chocolate covered strawberry.   But making a really good one, takes just a little more than that.  The effort is worth every chocolate covered juicy bite.

The first secret, which really shouldn’t be a secret, is to start with the best ingredients.  Get good chocolate.  What is good chocolate?  Good chocolate is made with cocoa butter.  Many of the commercial dipping “chocolates” on the market are not chocolate at all and are made of oil.  Reading labels and looking for cocoa butter on the label is important.  Get good strawberries.  They should be fresh and fully ripened but still firm. 

Secret number two, take the time to temper your chocolate.  The end result will be a strawberry with a nice shiny gloss and snap when you bite into it.  What is tempering?  It is melting the chocolate then cooling it to a specific temperature at which the cocoa butter crystals will re-solidify nice and hard giving it that gloss and snap.  Improperly tempered chocolate will be soft and dull.  There are a few ways to temper with the easiest being with a tempering machine.  But a great article on how to temper by hand can be found here:  http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Tempering-Chocolate/Detail.aspx.

I’ve had folks tell me they tried to make chocolate covered strawberries and after they dipped a couple of berries the chocolate got clumpy.  That brings me to secret number three.  Melted chocolate and moisture do not mix!  Any excess liquid from the berries or utensils will cause the chocolate to seize rendering it useless for dipping.  Tempering will not bring back seized chocolate.  You must throw it out.  Or eat it, immediately.  Strawberries should be room temperature before dipping.  Cold berries can bring your chocolate out of temper or cause it to firm up before you are finished dipping. 

Lastly, let your dipped berries firm up at room temperature.  They will develop condensation if stored for too long in the fridge.  For that reason it is best to make them as close to serving time as possible.  As for storing leftovers, I’m still working on that one as I don’t ever seem to have any. 

Yes there is a little science and work involved in making a great chocolate covered strawberry.  When I’m short on time, a great solution is to simply serve fresh strawberries with chocolate fondue allowing each person to dip and indulge at their leisure.

Red White and Blue Berries

1 Pint Fresh Strawberries, Washed and Dried Thoroughly

½ lb. Good Quality White Chocolate (I prefer Dove®)

Blue Sugar for Garnish

Temper white chocolate either by hand or with a tempering machine and dip dry berries ¾ of the way into the chocolate leaving part of the red berry exposed.  Hold strawberry over chocolate bowl until excess chocolate has dripped off.  Lay on a parchment lined baking sheet and sprinkle with blue sugar before the chocolate firms.  Allow chocolate to firm at room temperature.

Caramel Carrot Cake Balls

I first encountered the phenomena of the cake ball about 10 years ago when I was really into cake decorating.  Over the years they’ve grown in popularity and are now a mainstream item and are commonly marketed as cake pops. 

They are quite simple to make and are a great way to put good use to leftover cake or cake crumbs.  Whenever I level off a cake crown, I simply freeze the scraps and then when I need a quick treat, whip up some cake balls.  You can mix and match flavors of cake or use all one flavor.  Whatever suits your fancy.

Most recipes call for adding icing to moisten the cake.  You can use really any wet ingredient-jam or jelly, lemon curd, honey, chocolate sauce or even caramel which is amazing with leftover carrot cake.

Caramel Carrot Cake Balls

Carrot Cake

Caramel Sauce (of course I recommend homemade)

Tempered Chocolate

To make the cake balls simply mash up cake in a bowl using a wooden spoon.  Pour in caramel sauce a little at a time and stir.  Add caramel until you have a “meatball” consistency.  Scoop into balls using a small ice cream scoop.  Place balls on a sheet of parchment and chill for 1 hour.  Dip in tempered chocolate and allow to firm up. 

Enjoy!

White Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Bark

I love making chocolate bark.  It follows my same philosophy about making trifle.  You can pretty much take whatever you have, sprinkle it on tempered chocolate, and call it "bark".  

Bark is such an interesting name for a chocolate confection so I decided to do a little research to see how that term originated.  I consulted Wikipedia and a number of websites but could not locate the history of chocolate bark.  I even consulted The Chocolate Bible but it had no mention of bark.

So my theory is this, since bark is typically made with a milk or dark chocolate, covered with a variety of nuts and fruits, and made in large sheets, it perhaps gets its name from the fact that it resembles tree bark.  That's my story.  I'm sticking to it. 

White Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Bark

12 oz. Dove Chocolate Discoveries™ Chef Series White Chocolate

1 Cup Coarsely Crushed Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies

½ Cup Coarsely Crushed Pretzel Pieces

¼ Cup Dove Chocolate Discoveries™ Peanut Butter Filled Baking Bits

Pretzel M&M’s in Pastel Colors

Heat chocolate in the microwave in 20-second intervals (stirring after each 20 seconds) until smooth.  Do not heat for more than 20 seconds at a time as it can scorch!  Line parchment paper with cookies and pretzel pieces making a roughly a 9x9 square.  Pour melted chocolate over cookie/pretzel mixture and using a small spatula, carefully spread until smooth.  Add M&M’s and peanut butter bits and lightly press them into the chocolate.  Chill for 10 minutes or until set.  Break into bark and enjoy!

Cacao-New Meaning to the Word Bitter

A couple of years ago I was traveling thru rural NJ (yes there is a such thing as rural NJ) and went thru the quaintest little village in Lafayette.  I was with a fellow Chocolatier and she and I were commenting on the charm of this town when we saw a place called, The Chocolate Goat.  Being Chocolatiers, we of course had to stop.  If for nothing more than some “market research”.  It is pretty cool working in a profession where I can write off chocolate purchases as a business expense.

The Chocolate Goat did carry a few things chocolate that I had yet to see.  One item in particular was brewable cacao.  It was ground up cocoa beans (or cacao beans) that you could brew into a tasty drink.  Tasty.  Such a subjective word.  The store clerk said she loved it and had a cup every day.  Never had it.  Got to try it!

The packaging for the brewable cacao said, “Taste the Chocolate”.  Yes, taste, so subjective.  My friend Dianne was over the first time I decided to give it a try.  We brewed up a couple of cups and could smell the faint aroma of chocolate as it brewed.  As we anxiously awaited the brewing we discussed how excited we were to try something new and how amazing it was probably going to be.  Probably.  That’s another subjective word.  It had the color of tea once brewed and the faint aroma of chocolate.  We poured our cups and sipped at the same time.  Dianne’s eyes got really big and I’m sure mine did too.  I couldn’t tell if hers were big because it was SO good, or big like mine as I was trying to swallow it and not spew it all over the place.  It was Bitter.  I mean bitter with a capital B and I definitely didn’t “taste the chocolate”.  We both asked one another, “What did you think?”  It’s sort of like on those Travel Channel food show moments where the host travels to some foreign country and is fed something really bizarre and they say, “Well that’s interesting”.  Fortunately for us, we spoke our minds and said, “It needs a little something.”  Haha, little something.    

If you’ve ever bitten into a raw cacao bean, it will give new meaning to the word bitter.  It happened to me in the Dominican Republic last year.  Yes, I was warned but that “just gotta try it” attitude got the best of me.  Wowser.  Yep, definitely did not taste like chocolate.  Yep, definitely bitter.   Actually, it wasn’t that bitter but not something I would want to just snack on.  Or ever really eat again either.  This brewable cacao, I dare say, did give new meaning to the word bitter.

But, as Dianne and I discovered, when served with sugar and cream it was actually quite tasty and had a very delicate, sweet chocolate note.  I’m proud to say after finding just the right amount of sugar and cream, I did finish brewing, and enjoying, the entire bag!  

Oh Cast Iron, You’re a Grills Best Friend!

I’ve long thought cast iron cookware was a staple of only Southern kitchens.  There’s nothing better than hot buttered cornbread from a cast iron pan.  I was never a big fan of cornbread as a kid, but that’s a different story now.  It’s such a great childhood memory when I make cornbread in my grandmother’s old cast iron pan.  The memory is what makes it so good.  But as I’ve learned from Top Chef University, cast iron is also a favorite among chefs-even for grilling.  Really, you can get that much flavor “grilling” indoors?  I’ll admit I was skeptical when I saw my chef instructor, Spike Mendelsohn and several subsequent instructors, “grilling” on a cast iron grill pan.  They are just doing that for ease of instruction, so I thought.

I have a cast iron grill pan.  I bought it a few years ago at the Lodge store in South Pittsburgh, Tennessee, where Lodge is made.  I’d used it a time or two-mainly the smooth side for making pancakes.  The grill side of it didn’t produce a piece of meat any more flavorful than a non-stick pan, in my opinion.  Plus, my non-stick pan was a whole lot lighter and easier to manage.  Enter course 2 of Top Chef University. 

In my quest to create every recipe featured in this course, I got out the grill pan and made Chef Spike’s Asian Flank Steak.  It looked pretty with its perfect cross-hatch marks and smelled delicious.  Yes you might fool me by looks, but I’m going to bet it doesn’t taste like anything that has ever come off of my outdoor grill.  And I was right.  Very, very right.    It tasted nothing like I had ever cooked on my outdoor grill-it was better!  Sure the Asian marinade had flavored and tenderized the meat, but WOW, what a difference it made just learning a few new cooking techniques.  My grill pan has not been in the cabinet since! 

There are 2 main things I’ve learned that have contributed to my new found love of my cast iron grill.

1.      Season your cast iron grill and get it really hot before adding the meat.  To tell if it’s hot enough, hold your hand about 2 inches above the grill.  If you can’t leave it there longer than about 5 seconds, it’s ready!

2.      Use a towel to pat dry any excess moisture on meat before grilling-it will get a much better layer of browning, aka caramelization.  And as Top Chef Carla says, “There’s flavor in the brown!”

Hello Old Friend

Well, hello blog.  How are you?  I've missed you!  I'm so glad we just ran into each other.  I've been cooking, traveling and creating in the kitchen like crazy, I think it's time we caught up!  Three months has been too long a separation and will take some time to fill you in completely, but in a nutshell............

I'm at the halfway point with my Top Chef University Courses and I've learned so many awesome new tricks in the kitchen.  Not to mention cooked some amazing new dishes and created some of my own.  I'm looking into other courses once this one is complete.  

Speaking of kitchen, we just updated all of our appliances and we now have a gas range!  Yes I have gas!  I'm so excited.  To break it in right, I made 16 gallons of White Chocolate Irish Potato Soup for the United Cerebral Palsy's Irish Evening.  

So far this year I've experienced new chocolates in St. Petersburg, Florida and most recently did a chocolate tour around New York City.  I've got so many ideas from that trip-just got to find time to incorporate them all.  

I've been working on some new projects about which I'm super excited.  As of right now they are just in the "idea" stage but I'm taking steps to start researching how to make them reality.    

I'm even rejuvenating my passion for cakes and baking up several scratch carrot cakes with homemade caramel sauce for Easter next week.

So, how about we make a date for coffee tomorrow and I'll get started filling you in? 

Top Chef University

Recently Groupon had an offer for Top Chef University which is series of online cooking classes taught by former contestants on the Top Chef show.  Now I love culinary classes but prefer a live instructor and class.  But since it was a crazy price and the fact that I had credit in my Groupon account from a local spa experience that went terribly awry, I decided what the heck.  I’m of the mind that if there is an opportunity to learn one nugget of information, then it is worthwhile.  And while I think I’m pretty well versed in the kitchen, I’m well versed as a ”home cook”, certainly not a chef!  I have plenty of nuggets to learn.

The site has a professional feel complete with a report card, a tattletale report to track your frequency of logins (hello accountability!), as well as a certification upon completion.  It appears there are well over 200 videos and lessons.  Oh, and tests too.  So this is definitely not something I’m going to sit down with and blaze thru in an afternoon. 

A couple of days ago I started the coursework.  The first session is on the basics.  There are 19 videos on the basics.  Nineteen!  Carla Hall, one of the instructors and a finalist from Top Chef New York, is very pleasant and fun in her presentation.  Oh, and she’s a Southern girl as she likes to say, so we have that in common.  And she loves peas.  Carla, you and I are going to get along fabulously!

In one of the basic lessons Carla covers the julienne cut.  Now I’ve cut julienne carrots before, but she made it look super easy and didn’t include all those extra little cuts I have to make to get them into those perfect little matchsticks.  I’m intrigued!  At the end of the lesson she said, “Now go grab a bag of carrots and start cutting”.  I’ve never been so excited about a freaking bag of carrots! 

So last night I played with my carrots and made beautiful little matchsticks and some little carrot cubes.  I was so inspired and excited I created a yummy and gorgeous side dish to complement last night’s dinner-Fresh Steamed Green Beans with Meyer Lemon Olive Oil and Julienned Carrots.  I went to bed excited about the improvement on my skill.  Yep this is going to be worth the investment!

Fresh Steamed Green Beans with Meyer Lemon Olive Oil and Julienned Carrots

1 lb. Fresh Green Beans

2 Cloves of Garlic, minced

Meyer Lemon Olive Oil

1 Carrot, julienned

Kosher Salt

Wash beans and remove ends.  Place in a steamer basket and steam for 8 minutes.  Heat Meyer lemon olive oil over medium heat and add garlic.  Sweat garlic for 2 minutes then add green beans, carrots and salt.  Cook over medium heat for 3 minutes tossing occasionally with tongs.