"Easy" Chocolate Strawberries

I love a nice juicy, sweet, chocolate dipped strawberry! They are SO yummy. But, they can be a mess to make (oh darn, you have to lick chocolate off your fingers). I don't know about the rest of the world, but it seems like here in America we're all about finding easier ways to get things done. Call it efficiency, laziness, ingenuity, weirdness, whatever. With our craze for easy, it was no wonder that this pin took Pinterest by storm:

The Original Pin:

http://www.jcrochoux.com/collection/Temporaire

The caption on this one usually goes something like this: "Easy chocolate dipped strawberries using an ice cube tray!"

Seems easy. Ice cube tray. Add strawberries and chocolate. Freeze/cool. Eat. Repeat. Nechama saw this pin and, even though the site it linked to didn't have written instructions, she figured the pictures explained it well enough:

Here is her run of this project:

So I've been eyeing this pin for a while. I LOVE chocolate covered strawberries. But its always such a pain to dip them, and then they drip...

Anyway, when I saw this pin, I knew I had to try it. There were no instructions, but it seemed easy enough, right? WRONG. I started by washing my strawberries and outing them in the ice cube tray. (I only filled half a tray in case it was a GCT 5)

Then I melted my chocolate in the microwave. 

I then proceeded to dump it on the strawberries and smooth it, as shown.

I stuck them in the freezer and waited for about 15 minutes until I was sure they had hardened. I popped them out and got this:

The Pinstrosity

I'd rate this as a 3 - it didn't do what it was supposed to, but it still tasted great. My tip for anyone attempting this:

Add oil/butter/margarine to the chocolate mixture. Even with smoothing, it did not drip down enough. It needs to be liquidy!

Chocolate. Check. Strawberries. Check. But...just not quite how it was supposed to turn out. I got looking around online for the source of the top photos in the pin Nechama used and found their original web home. Nechama ended up following the instructions on the blog, without actually even seeing the original blog. Good job Nechama!

I have a few suggestions for this project for any of you who want to try it.
1. If you are going to use the method above, definitely add shortening to your melted chocolate. If it is thinner, it will run down into the tray better and cover the strawberries. Just add a fingerfull at a time, it doesn't take a ton of shortening to do the job.
2. Another approach you could take is to fill each compartment of the ice cube tray about 1/3 of the way full of melted chocolate, then add your strawberries, then top with chocolate.
3. Let me pull up the original photo and I'll point out something I noticed with it.

See the groove in the chocolate on the bottom? I think this is a chocolate candy bar. This may be a commercial product and not a DIY project picture, but I think you can still get the same effect. Fill the ice cube tray compartments 1/3 of the way full of melted chocolate. Add strawberries. Add more melted chocolate to just cover the top of the strawberry. Top with a chocolate bar.

To me the photo actually looks more like someone chopped the top off the strawberry to make it flat, dipped it in chocolate (you can stab the top of the strawberry with a fork to make it easy), and then put the dipped berries on a chocolate bar to cool. Why do I think this? Look at the front two strawberries. Their sides are "glued" together with chocolate. That wouldn't happen in an ice cube tray.

Whatever method you choose to make these though...it's chocolate and it's strawberries. Just with those two words it's hard not to have a win!

Don't forget to check back in at noon for today's Use It Up project post!