Delicious Chocolate Covered Strawberries, stuffed with Nutella and decorated as Easter Chicks. The perfect fun treat this Easter!
Ingredients
12 Fresh Strawberries
1/2 cup (125g) Nutella
2 cups (24og) white chocolate
1 tsp vegetable oil
1/2 cup (60g) confectioners/icing sugar
1-3 tbsp water
Yellow, Orange and Black food colouring
Instructions
Line a cookie/baking sheet with parchment paper, no baking involved but this is the best way to hold your strawberries!
First we stuff the strawberries! Pull off the leaves and then use a 1/4" piping nozzle (star or round) and push into the top of the strawberries, this creates our centre. You can also use a knife, but I found a piping nozzle the quickest and easiest way to do this.
Put your Nutella in a piping bag fitted with the same 1/4" piping nozzle, and pipe Nutella inside the strawberries (easiest way to do this is stick the nozzle right inside, and pull it out as you pipe). Set aside on baking sheet.
Put the white chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Fill a small saucepan with a couple inches of water and bring to a gentle boil. Place your bowl on top and stir occasionally as the chocolate melts. You can melt the chocolate in the microwave, but I find the double boiler method best for this as you can easily reheat the chocolate if it starts to cool too much when dipping the strawberries.
Once melted, stir in the oil (this makes it easier to coat the strawberries, it will add no taste). Add 3-5 drops of yellow food colouring and stir until you have an even, bright yellow (add more or less to get your desired shade).
Now it's time to dip your strawberries. I tried a number of methods and found the best way for even coating is using my fingers, it's messy and hot but it worked! You can also try putting them on a thin skewer.
Tip: Make sure to put a thin coating of chocolate on the bottom of the strawberry or your Nutella is liable to fall out!
Put your baking sheet of chocolate covered strawberries in the freezer for about 30 minutes, this will make decorating them much easier.
To make the decorating icing, put your confectioners/icing sugar in a bowl and add water. Start with 1 tbsp and add more if needed. You want this icing to be VERY thick, almost too thick. Think consistency of a wet clay.
Separate the icing into three bowls, with 1 tbsp in one bowl, 2 tbsp in another and then the rest in the last (can use the mixing bowl for this, don't make more dishes for yourself!).
Add 1 drop of black food colouring the 1 tbsp bowl, mix to combine (add more colour if needed).
Add 2 drops orange food colouring (or 1 drop yellow, 2 drops red if you don't have orange) to the 2 tbsp bowl, mix to combine (add more colour if needed).
Leave the last bowl white.
Now it's time to decorate! Put the orange icing into a piping bag fitted with a very small round tip (the pin point one). Or snip off the very end of the bag if you don't have a tip, remember you want a very small hole. Put the white icing in a piping bag fitted with a larger round tip, about 1/8" on an inch - you can, in theory, snip off the end of the piping bag instead of a nozzle but it will make it harder to get a round eye! You will not need a piping bag for the black icing.
How to decorate (please see video for the visual): Using the orange icing, pipe a triangle in the middle for the beak. Then three lines either side at the bottom for the feet.
Using the white icing, pipe two dots above the beak for the eyes. Use a damp finger to flatten down or tidy up as needed.
Use a toothpick (or a piece of dry spaghetti if you don't have a toothpick like me!) and dip into the black icing, use this to paint on the "pupils" to the eyes. You can also use this same method to add eyebrows or eyelashes if you like!
Use the orange icing to add any hair that you like.
And you're done!
Notes
These strawberries shouldn't be kept more than a day, as they tend to "weep" juice and go soggy.
CoursesDessert
Recipe by A Tipsy Giraffe at https://www.atipsygiraffe.com/strawberry-easter-chicks-2/