Chocolate-covered strawberries

Mark Bittman (aka the Minimalist) made a video a few weeks ago about how eeeeasy tempering chocolate for dipping is. But it still involved more steps and more gadgets than what's really necessary. Oh yeah, I know that "all I have to do is to measure 3 or 4 temperatures with my new-fangled candy thermometer, use a double boiler, AND a stove," but really Mark, there is a fantastically easy way of doing this (maybe it's not called tempering but I can't taste the difference), so easy that Chris and I made a batch of chocolate-dipped strawberries in our dorm lounge in under an hour with delicious results, without having to maintain an optimal dipping temperature of 88-91 degrees (Dear NYT, please speak to my agent about putting a feature up on your homepage. I might be able to take time out of my busy winter break to put something together).

From Late Fall 2009

Chris diligently drying the strawberries:

From Late Fall 2009

Anyway, the process is super simple. First, you have to wash and dry the strawberries -- really dry them, otherwise the chocolate won't stick to the fruit as well. Then, put chocolate bits (I like dark baking chocolate, the Swarthmore Head Nut has some good ones, but any semi-sweet chocolate bits will work) in a glass (not plastic!) bowl and stick in the microwave until it starts to have a little sheen. Take it out and stir it around, and stick it back in if there are unmelted bits in it. It will never turn very liquidy like fondue chocolate, which was what I was expecting so don't heat it too much (~2min on high). Then, dip the strawberries. When you lift up the fruit, give it a little shake to get the excess chocolate off and then turn it upside down to smooth out the texture. Place it on wax paper.

I originally bought white and dark chocolate, hoping to get a fancy, layered look. Unfortunately, the mug that I was using to melt the white chocolate got too hot and burned the chocolate, which was really sad. So again, I would recommend using a glass bowl (pyrex works great) instead of anything else. But we still ended up dotting a couple of strawberries with the unburned white chocolate:

From Late Fall 2009

From Late Fall 2009