Heart Shaped Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Happy Valentine's Day!

Part of Dustin's Valentine's Day gift was supposed to be what I thought would be a cute and thoughtful take on the Valentine's classic, chocolate covered strawberries. I pulled the stems, cut the strawberries in half and cut the tops to have two bumps, turning the strawberry halves into hearts. I thought it would be really awesome to carve a little bit of the middle out of the strawberries and fill them with something tasty before I dipped them in decadent dark chocolate, to give these strawberries a little something extra. I thought about using some kind of fruit jelly or maybe a white chocolate, but I figured jelly wouldn't stand out with the flavor of the strawberry and white chocolate would just blend with the covering chocolate.

After scouring the cabinets I came across some marshmallow creme way back from Halloween when we semi-successfully attempted to recreate butterbeer from the Harry Potter books. Yes, we are nerds. I figured I'd use the leftover marshmallow creme to make simple fudge at some point, but this seemed like an even better use for the creamy white stuff.

After using a knife to slightly hollow out the insides of the strawberries, I took a small dab of marshmallow creme and spread it on the inside of the strawberry half. This was an unusually difficult and messy task. Once all of the strawberry halves had been filled, I set them on a cooling rack with a piece of aluminum foil underneath and spooned melted dark chocolate over the tops. When the hot chocolate touched the marshmallow creme, a good chunk of the marshmallow creme rolled off the strawberry along with the excess dark chocolate, creating an even larger mess for me.

Once that side of the strawberry had dried, I turned each over and covered the other half in chocolate. In the end, most of the strawberries turned out to be an ugly looking disaster (but may I note, they still tasted quite good). But it's the thought of the gift that counts, right?

Maybe I should leave this sort of work to the professionals instead of trying the homemade route. But if I ever try doing something like this again I'll have to make some revisions. Namely, there needs to be some way to set the marshmallow creme before it's covered in chocolate. Maybe I should put them in the refrigerator beforehand?

Not the greatest picture and not the greatest looking chocolate in the world.

Nonetheless, it was a fun, if only somewhat successful, experiment in the kitchen.