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Dip Into Sweets For Your Sweet

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By BRIAN MELTON McClatchy Newspapers

Published: February 13, 2008

Cynic that I am, I'll just say it: Valentine's Day is the dumbest holiday of the year.

Most men feel the same way. If retailers offered special Valentine's Day sales on tools and car parts, then we might semi-sorta-kinda-maybe enjoy the holiday. But restaurants and florists ... especially florists ... jack up their prices to stratospheric heights simply because they can.

The holiday's origins are an incomprehensible stew of convoluted traditions, combining a frisson of ancient pagan Greco-Roman fertility rites with a soupcon of Christian martyrdom, leavened with a Middle Age notion of courtly love and tossed together with 19th century American greeting card printing prowess.

The result: a half-baked holiday light on meaning and heavy on the Visa balance.

If there is any residual purity to the holiday, it surely springs from children. I cherish the memory of exchanging cheap little valentines in grade school, even if the nuns did force me to use my best penmanship to inscribe my name with a foot-long pencil the diameter of a garden hose.

Even better: bouncing off the walls for four hours after stuffing my face with those chalky little pastel hearts with embossed felicitations: "Be Mine," "I'm Yours," "Love 4-ever" and all that junk.

In a world of I-this and I-that, I'm heartened to see the same little bags of cheap valentines and chalky hearts on store shelves for today's generation of future cynics.

With that innocent era in mind, I propose a way to subvert the evil machinations of greedy restaurateurs and usurious florists and return to a more innocent era of Valentine's gifts: handmade chocolate-dipped strawberries.

Based on the premise that chicks dig even the tiniest display of romance, this little recipe is practically guaranteed to elicit cries of "Awww, that's so sweet; I just love yewwwww."

Bear in mind that your execution will probably not look like the fancy store-bought strawberries, but then again, that's the point - especially if you can somehow involve children in the process.

Your strawberries will look goofy, like mine, but you'll score major points and be miles ahead of the Clorox-toothed, streaked-hair dude expensing the cheesy limo at some fancy-pants restaurant.

Besides, the goal is volume: a mountain of chocolate-covered strawberries. And while they might not look artistic, they taste great; it's chocolate and strawberries, so how can you really go wrong?

All you need is a little patience, a lot of toothpicks and a firm belief that Valentine's Day, like the flu, will mercifully soon pass.

First, lower your expectations. You will not achieve the look of professionally hand-dipped chocolate strawberries unless you have a quality chocolate tempering device.

Candymakers know that tempering restabilizes the cocoa butter crystals so that when the chocolate cools and solidifies, it's smooth and glossy, not dull and grainy.

Problem is, good tempering devices cost upward of a hundred bucks if not more, which suddenly makes buying professionally dipped strawberries a lot more cost-effective.

However, if you use semisweet or dark chocolate, tempering isn't really that big a problem. White chocolate, on the other hand, is a completely different story, since it's not really chocolate and has no cocoa butter. So guess what? No swirly white chocolate piping for my valentine, just a mountain of good ol' semisweet-chocolate-covered strawberries!

The only other problem area comes from moisture on the strawberries, which can make the chocolate become a grainy, unworkable glop. Again, a chocolate tempering device makes this a nonissue, but if you just make sure your berries are dry, you'll be fine.

Remember, the point of this exercise is to have fun making a homemade product. Yes, it's going to wind up a little goofy looking. So repeat after me - tastes great, less expensive.

Look for extra-large strawberries with long stems - perfect for dipping.

CHOCOLATE-DIPPED STRAWBERRIES

2 dozen fresh strawberries, green caps intact

12-ounce bag of semisweet chocolate morsels

Toothpicks

Wash berries and thoroughly pat dry; dispose of wilted or mushy berries.

In a microwave-safe bowl, melt chocolate using either the defrost setting or 10 percent power in the microwave. Use one-minute increments until you see the chocolate start to sag and glisten, then stir with a spoon and continue gently nuking until your stirring pays off with a smooth consistency.

As you stir, the chocolate will flow together and melt, so don't overdo the nuke. Less is more: You can easily stir out unmelted chocolate but can't fix burned-on chocolate.

Insert a toothpick into the top of each strawberry, then dip the lower portion of the berry into the melted chocolate. Withdraw slowly, give it a small shake to fill in all the cracks, then swirl with a clockwise motion to spin off remaining chocolate. If some of the chocolate curls back on itself, so much the better. Add sprinkles for a fun little effect.

Allow strawberries to cool on a sheet pan covered with wax paper for about 10 minutes, then chill in the fridge for extra snap.

Makes 24.

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