Game Day Chocolate Covered Strawberries!

I’m back with another game day recipe!

I love football season for different reasons than my boyfriends. He knows more about football than football knows about itself. (serious face) It is spine-chilling scary when he gets into football watching mode. He goes into a coma-like state. His eyes don’t leave the screen for long periods of time and then all of a sudden he POPS UP from the couch like a mad gorilla either cursing or cheering at the screen! I’m always shouting “IT CAN’T HEAR YOU’.  It’s kind of like those scary movies when you think the person is dead and all of a sudden they open their eyes. I wish I was exaggerating but unfortunately…I’m not.

As for me, I love football for the pleasant parts. The “spirit” of football excites me. The fact that I get to dress up in warm sweaters, drink hot cider, wear ribbons in my hair, and spend all day baking, or cooking. When it comes down to watching the game, I get really nervous for the safety of the players. I find myself cringing and squinting my eyes every time someone gets aggressively tackled. But don’t get me wrong; I still love watching the game and get excited when my team is winning. I just don’t take it too seriously or let it affect my day.

I will always love high school football. I don’t care where the game is, who is playing, or how bad they are! Jeremy and I try to go to high school football games every year. It’s something fun to do on a Friday night. And fortunately his football coma doesn’t exist at high school games.

Last night, we were invited to our friends son’s high school football game. The Eisenhower Eagles! The weather dropped down to 45 degrees! It was freezing, but so much fun! As a thank you for the Lion’s football tickets he gave us a couple weeks ago, I decided to make him a box of chocolate covered strawberries. I made them in his son’s school colors so he could enjoy at the tailgate.

I make chocolate covered strawberries a lot. They are beautiful and classy. You can alter them to fit someone’s diet or allergies. It’s easy to make them cohesive with the occasion by adding different toppings or coating flavors. I used to get overwhelmed while making them. It would take me way too long and I’d get frustrated. Now, I do a couple things to make them less over whelming and simple!

I hope this post helps!

Limit your toppings. Don’t go overboard and buy all kinds of crazy toppings, unless you’re making them with a group of friends.

Choose toppings that taste good together. Just in case you want to mix them up or they get stuck together by accident. No one wants to bite into peanut butter and mint at the same time.

For mine, I chose gluten free pretzels, semi-sweet chocolate chips, sliced almonds, and chopped pecans. There are a ton of fun decorations you can choose from! Get creative.

To match the strawberries to the school colors, I bought black and blue decorative sprinkles!

If you do not have a chocolate melt-er, use the stove top! I used a little $20.00 chocolate melter from Wilton. You can find them at Walmart, Michael’s, Joann Fabric, or Hobby Lobby.

I chose candy melts for the chocolate coating. Any kind of chocolate chips can be used. The candy melts will melt much faster than Almond bark or chocolate bark.

If you need to make yours dairy, gluten, nut, and soy free; use the Enjoy Life chocolate chunks!

While the chocolate is melting in the pot, lay down a sheet of wax paper to place the dipped strawberries on.

Wash off all of the strawberries and dab them dry with a paper towel. If any water is left on the strawberries, it will harden the chocolate in the melt-er. That is a disaster because the chocolate won’t stick and it’ll clump.

Hold the strawberry by it’s stem and dip it into the chocolate. Let it drip a little and then carefully lay it on the wax paper to dry.

The strawberries that turn out kind of “clumpy” from a bad dip can easily be fixed by topping them with decorations while the chocolate is still wet. The chocolate one above was fixed by me placing chocolate chips on top. It looks like I meant to do that.

I saved the nice and smooth ones for the fancier decorations.

If you have a hard time getting the decorations to stick to the strawberries neatly; use a plate to roll the strawberries into the decorations instead of sprinkling them on top.

If you are going to use sprinkles, make sure to add them while the chocolate is wet otherwise they’ll fall off immediately.

I let all the strawberries dry on a baking sheet covered in wax paper.

While the white chocolate was melting in the pot for dipping the other half of the strawberries; I finished up decorating the cocoa chocolate ones. I heated a half cup of white chocolate candy melts in the microwave and added it to a squeeze bottle to drizzle on top.

The white chocolate has always taken longer to dry. Make sure when you pick them up from the sheet they are hard. If they are slightly wet, you’ll leave finger prints on the strawberries and that doesn’t look too appetizing!

If there is excess chocolate on the bottom, take a knife and slice it off.

Making swirls and decorating them is my favorite part. You can use the squeeze bottles to write names or fun phrases!

I added a little decorative sprinkles onto the chocolate drizzle and it looked so cute! I’m thinking about making these for Halloween! I want to do black cat strawberries or white chocolate mummy strawberries!

I was pretty pleased with out outcome of these! 🙂

The strawberries take about 20 minutes to fully dry.

While the strawberries were drying, I took a break and enjoyed a little salad! I knew this was going to be the last chance I had to eat before getting rushed to the game. I still had to get ready and drive thirty minutes to meet Jeremy for the game! Of course we were going to eat after the game, but that was way later!

Don’t make these when you are hungry. You’ll end up eating more than you expected. Trust me, I’ve done this!

I bought a giant black gift box. On the top of the box, I used acrylic paint to make a little artwork. Acrylic dries the fastest.  

I laid tissue paper in the school colors down at the bottom of the box. I topped the tissue paper with all of the chocolate covered strawberries!

I was so happy with how these turned out! It seems like a lot of work but it’s really not! 

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