Gourmet Chocolate Covered Strawberries

This holiday season, put on your creative hats and add a personal touch to your gift giving experience.  Here is a very easy recipe for making Gourmet Chocolate Covered Strawberries.

Gourmet Chocolate Covered Strawberries are fun to make, as well as eat!  These also make great edible gifts, especially during this holiday season.    The recipe is quite self-explanatory from the pictures, though will try to explain the steps that I followed, as much as possible.  

Recipe:

Organic strawberries - 24

Brown chocolate - 4 Oz (I used Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips)

White chocolate - 4 Oz (I used Ghirardelli chocolate chips)

Pistachios (salted) - a handful, chopped

Almonds - a handful, chopped, roasted

Candy canes - 4, coarsely crushed

Candy sprinkles - As desired (I made the sprinkles at home from sugar)

I made about 4 dozen of these - all gone in no time! There is no set rule as to how to make these - go wild in your creative imagination. Can use any or all of the above toppings, or completely different ones that go with chocolate and strawberries.  Pick good quality, not so ripe strawberries.  That way, this dessert can be refrigerated for a couple of days, in case there are any leftovers (leftovers? what leftovers? These would be gone in no time!).

• Wash and clean the strawberries, making sure there is absolutely no water on it.  Line a plate with parchment paper.  Line up the small bowls filled with various toppings.
• Melt chocolate (one color at a time) over double boiler.  That is, heat a vessel with water over the stove, take another smaller vessel, put chocolate in it, and hold it inside the water, stirring, while making sure, water doesn't seep into the container. 
• Dip a strawberry in melted chocolate 3/4 of the way.  Then dip it into a desired topping.  Rest it on the plate lined with parchment paper.  Repeat with few other strawberries.  In my opinion, the candy sprinkles, at least the colors that I used, look better on the strawberries covered with white chocolate.  Leave some strawberries without dipping into the topping, so that you can draw/write on it with the other colored chocolate.  
• Repeat these steps with the other colored chocolate.
• If the melted chocolate becomes bit harder while going through this process, you can re-melt it using the double boiler method. Microwave works too, but you gotta be very careful that the chocolate doesn't get burnt in microwave.
• Pipe in the letters/designs on the strawberries that were kept aside, without dipping in any of the toppings, with a different colored chocolate.  If you want to make a quick pipe at home, take a zip lock bag, cut a very tiny portion on the bottom corner, fill a spoon full of melted chocolate, make a cone shaped pipe, and write/draw with it over the strawberry.
• Once done with all the strawberries, cover the plate and refrigerate for an hour (if you can resist not eating these right away).  These taste good when chilled.  

Enjoy!!