Surfas and Lakeshore

When my daughter was young, being a good mother, I went to Lakeshore to buy her educational toys. When I was done shopping for her, I would walk across the parking lot and go to "my toy store", Surfas, where I would look at all their stuff. (In retrospect, I wonder which one of us I was really driving to Culver City for.) This is a restaurant and chef supply store that is open to the public. For those of you who wonder where I got all those weird kitchen gadgets, this is the place. They also have classes, including some great ones on chocolate. Right now I probably have over 30 lbs of different kinds of chocolate in my house for cooking. One of the ones that I always keep on hand is molding chocolate. If you want an elegant, easy to prepare dessert which always gets rave reviews, I would recommend you make an investment in molding chocolate. It keeps for years in a cool, dark place, but once you use this to make some chocolate, dipped strawberries you'll always be asked to bring them so it may not last for long.
Chocolate-dipped Strawberries
Ingredients
Strawberries - buy no sooner than the day before you need them.
Chocolate
Bring the strawberries to room temperature
Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Dip the strawberries in, leaving some red and the green stem visible.
Put the strawberries on parchment paper on cookie sheet. You can also use wax paper. Within 1-2 hours the chocolate will be dry.
Helpful hints:
1. Use organic strawberries. Then you don't have to wash them and wait for them to dry.
2. Only use unblemished strawberries. Otherwise, they will leak.
3. They need to be eaten soon after making.
4. You can use chocolate chips with some added solid vegetable fat (2 tsps per 8 ozs of chocolate). This will take longer to dry and doesn't look quite as elegant.
5. If you don't have a double-boiler, put some water in a pot, put another pot on top of it, making sure the water doesn't touch the bottom of the second pot. Voila, a double boiler.
6. If you are going to make a flat of these, get a bunch of kids to help. (My daughter and her friend, Mollie, were making these with me when they were 3!)
7. Sit back and wait for the compliments to pour in.

For full disclosure, much to my dismay, no one is paying me or sending me samples to review their products. One can only hope..........