Happy Thanksgiving! Here’s the final dish from Mother’s Day this year–only 6 months after the fact. Better later than never, I suppose.
You can find the other dishes I made for this year’s Mother’s Day under the tag MD2018 (there’s also last year’s MD2017). If you’re interested in a Simply Delicious Thanksgiving feast I did a few years ago, check out TGV 2016.
My mom always loves dipped strawberries, so I thought these would be a nice alternative to the mail-order/delivery ones you see all over the place around the holidays. Since I was also making 16-10: Strawberry Shortcake, it ended up being a very strawberry-heavy Mother’s Day. 🍓🍓
I’m not sure how I feel about the TIPS section recommending microwaving chocolate to melt it–I’ve NEVER had good luck with that. I wouldn’t suggest it, but some people can work microwave miracles.
Ingredients. I’m going to make a few coconut ones for posterity, but my mom isn’t a fan of coconut, so I’m gonna need to use something else too. I’ve chosen these cookies-n-cream sprinkles I had left over from a cake project over the summer, but other types of sprinkles, chopped nuts, or even crushed graham crackers/candy could work too.
Prepping the strawberries. This seems like a lot, but remember: this was for two recipes.
Melting the chocolate the way I know works: the double boiler. HOWEVER–you will see in just a few pictures that even though I initially followed the proper procedure, I ended up seizing my chocolate.
You may be wondering why that happened. My guess is that I left it on the burner too long and didn’t thin it out with a bit of water as it melted. I used dark chocolate instead of semisweet which has less fat/moisture in it–I think it scorched a bit and I didn’t save it in time. There are ways to fix seized chocolate by incorporating some cream and remelting the clumpy bits, but I just did the best I could with what I had.
I showed some orange juice concentrate in the ingredients shot, but I had extra juice left over from 16-10: Strawberry Shortcake, so I ended up using that instead. I also recycled the picture.
Here’s the strawberry-glazing setup. I also didn’t do a great job incorporating the powdered sugar into the orange juice–I admit that I made these after a long day/week at work and probably didn’t try as hard as I should have.
As you’ve noticed from the slow-down in posts over the last year or two, work has picked up over time and makes less time for things like this. I’m not going to give up, but sometimes it’s tougher to put the effort in than it used to be.
Here’s the final dipped strawberries. The plain chocolate ones on the right show how bad the chocolate seized–I didn’t even end up using most of those. The sprinkles covered up the worst of it, so I tried to make as many of those as I could. I made a few coconut ones just to try their method, but I wasn’t really a fan. Feel free to branch out and try different coatings if you’d like.
In case you’re interested, here’s what else I served with my Mother’s Day brunch. These were mixed roasted breakfast potatoes, using 5 different kinds.
Made some waffles on the waffle iron and kept them warm in a low oven.
I made Kahlúa whipped cream for 16-10 Strawberry Shortcake and used the extra for the waffles. Since I had so many strawberries, I used some for waffle toppings as well.
Here’s this recipe (15-37: Elegant Strawberries) and 16-10: Strawberry Shortcake served as one dessert for brunch. I think I salvaged it, but next time I’ll pay better attention and keep my chocolate from seizing.
Hope your Thanksgiving dessert turns out better than this one did for me!
Grade: A
