Today is St. Valentine’s Day, and Trader Joes was offering these “long stemmed” strawberries. To me, this was a better gift than roses ever were.

After washing the strawberries and the leaves around the stem, be sure to dry them well. I dried them three times to make sure no water was left on the berries. They thankfully could be squeezed well without mushing, so they were perfect.

I used two types of Valrhona chocolate (76% and 42%, I believe) and mixed that with a 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract and 1 Tbsp. of butter. I melted it all over simmering water, then dunked the berries in, getting a good coat. Since the chocolate wasn’t too thin, you could manage to get a good, thick coat on the berries. I placed the berries on a plate covered in parchment paper.

After 30 minutes of refrigeration to set the chocolate, I took them out so they could be eaten at room temperature.

Bon appétit!

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 14th, 2010 at 10:16 pm and is filed under In the Kitchen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.