Recipe: Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Talk about easy...impressive...and everyone loves them.
You cannot fail at these at long as you use good quality chocolate (here is a great website that explains everything you would ever want to know about chocolate and more importantly, quality chocolate), don't burn it and fresh strawberries that aren't over ripe.
I will not go into the 'tempering' of chocolate - as that is a whole article in itself. I'll just say that tempering chocolate is esstentially breaking down the chemical compond of chocolate with a varied degree of temperature in order to produce (melted) chocolate that will eventually harden, therefore producing the chocolate in a new 'chemical state' for the baking purpose you desire. Yeah, I think most pastry chefs study this stuff for weeks - then putting it in practice is a whole different thing! Here is a quick an easy few paragraphs to read if you are interested about tempering. I googled around for a more serious description, but most were more generalized them what I mentioned above. So I guess that gives me something to write an article about later.

Recipe: Chocolate Covered Strawberries

• 11 oz. or more (is enough to double-dip 8 medium sized strawberries)
• 8 Medium Sized Strawberries

1. Wash and dry your strawberries.
2. Set them on a sheet tray, covered with wax or partchment paper.
3. Place a sieve inside a medium sized pot. Fill up the water in the pot so that the water line sits just below the sieve.
4. Place the pot on the stove and bring to a boil.
5. Meanwhile, chop up chocolate into very small pieces - no larger than a tablespoon.
6. Place the chocolate in a metal bowl (that will fit nicely in the sieve).
7. When the water is boiling, place the chocolate filled bowl into the sieve and let the chocolate melt.
8. After a minute or two, gently stir the chocolate, moving it around the bowl, scraping the edges, helping it melt and circulating it, so that it doesn't burn.
9. When 90% of it melted, remove the bowl from the sieve and quickly dip the strawberries into bowl, covering 80%. When you pull out the strawberry, give it a little shake to remove any excess chocolate, then lay on sheet tray. Continue with remaining strawberries.
10. Let the strawberries sit at room temperature (around 65-70 degrees) until you plan to serve them (within 6 hours).

You are welcome to double-dip the strawberries. Just wait about 15 minutes after the first dip - while the first layer of chocolate starts harden. Then heat your chocolate again over the boiling water and do the process over again (steps 7-9).