Weddingbee PRO

Who doesn't like chocolate dipped strawberries?! Well, the answer that pops up in my head is “No one!” So you can see why I was so excited to get a wedding order from one of my brides to do chocolate-dipped tuxedo and wedding dress strawberries. Now of course, after dipping 110 of them my excitement dwindled a little - but once they were all bagged up and ready to go, the excitement came back.

Now, these wedding favors are definitely a show stopper and very fun for your guests since they get instant gratification once they sink their teeth into these beauties. These favors are pricey, but relatively easy to do. Hopefully this post will open your eyes to the world of chocolate-dipped strawberries and help you realize that you can do it too!

First, you need to purchase long stem strawberries. Now of course you can do this with regular strawberries, but if you are doing it for a wedding or event I would suggest going for the highest quality of strawberries, which will give you a larger strawberry and will result in a more uniform look overall and give that dramatic “wow” factor. Once you have your strawberries, you need to wash and dry them thoroughly. Then you need to either temper your white and dark chocolate, which is quite tricky to learn, but does give you a sense of accomplishment once you've done it. Or you can buy coating chocolate/confectioner's chocolate which is already formulated to harden or set once you have dipped your strawberries. A great brand of coating chocolate is Merkens, which can be found at Sugar Craft. Also, here is a link to more detailed instructions on using coating chocolate.

To make the tuxedos you need to melt or temper your chocolate, and then dip the front side of the strawberry into the white chocolate, making sure that you coat all the way up to the top. Then place the strawberry onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and let it dry.

Once the strawberry has dried, you need to dip the backside of the strawberry into the dark chocolate. After that, dip one side of the strawberry at an angle into the dark
chocolate, and then dip the other side of the strawberry at the same angle into the chocolate again so that you have matching sides of a tuxedo suit.

Make sure and let the excess amount of chocolate fall off of the strawberry into the bowl, so that you don't get a big pool around the bottom of the strawberry once it dries. Once you're done, place the strawberry back onto the parchment paper so it can dry.

If your lines aren't coming out straight, that's because the chocolate you are dipping into isn't flat all the way across. You need to make sure that the chocolate is a smooth surface to dip into.

To finish off your tuxedos you need to make a cornet (aka parchment paper cones) to pipe the chocolate buttons and bow tie on. To learn how to make cornets, you can go to this link. Fill your cornet with a small amount of chocolate and fold the sides of the cornet down to secure. (Hint: don't overfill your bag because most likely the chocolate will harden anyway and you will either need to fill a new bag or try and microwave the old bag for 5 seconds so it re-melts the chocolate.) Only cut off a small part of the cornet tip, so that your chocolate doesn't flow out too easily and then pipe three small dots up the strawberry and pipe two sideways triangles to form a bow tie.

To make the wedding dresses you need to dip your strawberry completely in white chocolate, and then let it dry on the parchment paper. Once dry, fill another cornet with white chocolate and cut off a small amount of the tip.

To make the dress effect you need to pipe lines of white chocolate at an angle on one side of the strawberry and then the other.

Let dry and then pipe five small dots at the top of the strawberry to form a necklace.

Well, hopefully this tutorial helps you out a little with your next chocolate-dipped strawberry endeavor! Here are a couple more photos of the finished product…enjoy!