Elise Strachan’s Freshly Picked Strawberry Baskets

This freshly picked strawberry baskets recipe by our baking editor Elise Strachan from My Cupcake Addiction is the perfect special dessert.

Elise’s first tip about working with chocolate is that ‘not all chocolate is the same!’

She says in her new book Sweet! Celebrations to remember that real chocolate contains cocoa butter. ‘If it contains cocoa butter, once you melt it, it will never set up again without ‘tempering’ ( a method of stabilising chocolate). Lots of people melt ‘real’ chocolate and set it in the fridge, where is sets up perfectly well,” she adds. “But when it comes out of the fridge and starts to melt immediately – even in the cool, it’s a guaranteed disaster and a really common problem.”

She suggests you learn how to ‘temper’ chocolate by watching her My Cupcake Addiction You Tube Channel, use ‘compound’ chocolates or use candy melts.

MAKES 6 BASKETS

INGREDIENTS

• 140 g milk compound chocolate
• 900 g small strawberries
• 30 g white compound chocolate
• 6 cardboard berry baskets

METHOD

1. Melt the milk chocolate to dipping consistency.
2. Using the leaves as a handle, gently dip each strawberry in the milk chocolate to halfway up the berry. Place the berries onto baking parchment to set.
3. Melt the white chocolate and use a toothpick to place small seed-size dots neatly over the strawberries.
4. Fill the berry baskets with the chocolate-dipped strawberries.

Image and recipe from Sweet! Celebrations by Elise Strachan (Murdoch Books $39.99)  Check out Elise Strachan’s recipe for chocolate sprinkle ice cream, here.