Strawberries were on sale for Valentine's Day the last time I was at the grocery store. I picked some up because the Kidlet loves strawberries and I knew they'd disappear. Then dinnertime rolled around and, after dinner, I was feeling like I could go for some sort of sweet treat. But I was also feeling very low-effort. So I flipped through my various cookbooks a bit and eventually spotted this "recipe" for dipping strawberries in chocolate. Not exactly a new idea, but it is a relatively quick and easy one. And that's exactly what I was after, so... win!

The original recipe called for melting a little vegetable shortening into the chocolate. I didn't have any shortening, but I did have coconut oil, so I just used a bit of that instead.

Normally I ignore recipes' instructions to use chocolate chips and just chop up and equivalent amount of bar or baking chocolate instead. In this case though, I thought that I should probably stick with the chocolate chips since they generally have stabilizers in them that tend to help them set up and hold their shape a bit better than bar chocolate. I used vegan dark chocolate chips for my rendition, but semi-sweet or milk chocolate would probably also work fine. (Although the milk chocolate might take slightly longer to firm up.)

Chocolate-Covered Strawberries

Slightly adapted from Dessert of the Day by Kim Laidlaw

Ingredients

• 450g fresh strawberries
• 1 c. chocolate chips
• 1/2 Tbsp. coconut oil

Directions

1. Wash the strawberries and set them aside. Leave the stems on.
2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
3. Melt the chocolate and coconut oil over very low heat, stirring, until smooth.
4. Remove from heat.
5. Working with one strawberry at a time, hold by the stem and dip in chocolate. Use a spatula to assist in getting the strawberry well-coated. Aim to coat each strawberry up to its widest point, but not all the way to the base of the stem.
6. Place the chocolate-coated strawberries on the prepared baking sheet.
7. Once all strawberries have been dipped, chill for a few minutes until the chocolate is firm and set.
8. Transfer to a plate and serve.