If you get the leaves wet, they can curl as they dry and won’t look as nice when you finish decorating them. You can use more or less than 16 strawberries if you want, just adjust the amount of chocolate chips accordingly to keep the ratio of berries to chocolate approximately the same.
Be careful not to burn the chocolate chips. Reduce the intervals to 20 seconds if they are almost all the way melted but just missing a couple of chips. Some common types of chocolate chips you can use are milk chocolate, dark chocolate, or white chocolate.
If you are making a larger batch of chocolate-covered strawberries, you can keep the melted chocolate warm in a slow cooker while you work.
Have all your toppings ready to go so you can just dip each berry in them immediately as you go. Put the berry on a plate or baking sheet lined with parchment paper or wax paper if you don’t want to cover it with toppings. It’s best to serve these the day they’re made. If you want to store them, however, keep them in the fridge.
You don’t have to cover the entire strawberry in nuts. If you want, just dip the tip in or cover only one side. Examples of nuts you could use include peanuts, pistachios, walnuts, pecans, and almonds.
Use a different flavor or color of chocolate chips from the chocolate you covered the strawberry in for more variety. For example, if you covered the strawberry in milk chocolate, you could dip it in dark chocolate chips or white chocolate chips. You could also use a different type of chips, such as caramel or butterscotch chips.
Use shaped sprinkles, like hearts or stars, to add a special touch. You can also set chocolate-covered strawberries on non-stick paper and then sprinkle the sprinkles over top of them to coat just one side.
You could also do this with small slices of other kinds of dried tropical fruits, such as pineapple or mango.
You could use chocolate chip cookies, Oreos, Snickers bars, mints, or candy canes to do this.
Put the strawberries in the fridge for 10-15 minutes if you want to speed up the process.
You can also drizzle the chocolate carefully from a spoon, it will just be more difficult to make precise lines.
For example, you could spell out your significant other’s name for Valentine’s Day and draw hearts on any leftover berries. You could even draw eyes to turn the strawberries into little creatures of some kind. Create a blob for each eye with white chocolate, then make the pupils with dark chocolate.
