Super Bowl Sunday Chocolate Strawberries

I found these cute chocolate covered strawberries on Pinterest and wanted to recreate them. I already had a container or milk chocolate from an earlier visit to the grocery store clearance shelf. So I just needed to pick up some strawberries and a bag of chocolates. 

This is apparently the wrong time of year to buy strawberries in New Hampshire, there were only a few boxes and all of the boxes had a weird array of shapes and sizes.  So I picked up 2 boxes of strawberries to insure that I would have enough "football shaped" ones. I think I will leave some of the funny shaped strawberries for my roommate who is starting a new diet this month. 

Most of theother times I have made "chocolate" dipped strawberries I have actually used melting candies, either because I wanted an odd color, or I didn't want to mess with chocolate. All I have ever heard about is how temperamental chocolate can be, and because I like my cooking experiments to be more fun than disappointing...I choose the easy way out. 

Today though is different. I am going to attempt to use my make shift double boiler to melt my milk chocolate.  In the bottom of my pot I placed a few of my boyfriends (washed) "whiskey rocks" to keep my inside bowl off of the bottom of the pan.

Oddly enough the chocolate was perfectly behaved and with frequent stirring became the correct consistency for dipping 

quite quickly and painlessly.

I prepped a baking pan with crushed ice and water, and then place a second lined baking pan on top for the strawberries to cool on. 

Then I dipped each strawberry and let excess chocolate run off. Then place on cooling pan.

Allow strawberries to completely harden before beginning to decorate.

Royal Icing (Joy of Baking)

1 Egg White

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 1/2 cups Powered Sugar

I whisked 1 egg white with a teaspoon of lemon juice, then added the powered sugar and continued to whisk on a low speed. The Joy of baking website suggests that the consistency is correct when you lift the whisk the ribbon of icing that falls into the bowl will continue to be visible for a few seconds before disappearing back into the bowl. 

I have a love hate relationship with icing, I love to eat and decorate with it, but I hate to get the icing into whatever device I am going to use to decorate with. Today I am going to try and use a small bottle to pipe the lines on my footballs. My first attempt to get the gooey icing into the bottle failed miserably. My funnel just clogged up and made a mess.

My SECOND attempt worked much better, and made me feel stupid for not doing it in the first place. My mom gave me a set of adorable pouring bowls for Christmas this year, and it worked like a charm. 

I had many failed attempts at decorating the footballs...

But after while I was able to get in the groove of making them at least resemble a foot ball :)

Net time I attempt to make these I think I will find something with a smaller tip on it to make more precise lines, but all and all the strawberries are cute and delicious.