Summer strawberries - chocolate dipped with chocolate transfer detail

Chocolate dipped strawberries can be transformed with the use of chocolate transfers. It's quick and easy to do. Chocolate dipped strawberries are a fond memory of Valentines Day for me. My now hubby presented me with a bowl of strawberries for Valentines day that he'd dipped himself way back in the 1990s when we first started dating. At the time I was suitably impressed that he'd taken the time to make something for me. I'm still impressed today when I'm given a home made gift, made with love.

Chocolate transfers elevate the simple chocolate dipped strawberry to a whole new level. Chocolate transfers come in a wide variety of colours and patterns, to suit every occasion. You can view our entire selection here.

Simply melt your chocolate over a double boiler, dip each strawberry and place down on your chocolate transfer sheet. Once cool, lift your strawberries away from the sheet and place on your serving dish (I do not refrigerate my strawberries, as this makes them ooze juice).

Any portion of unused transfer can be reused for your second round of dipping, simply place your next strawberry down on any patch of colourful transfer, avoiding the clear spaces, where the colour has been removed by the previous strawberry.

Strawberry pink champagne cupcakes

These cupcakes came about when I was tasked with making something for a cake guild meeting about "flavour profiles". I knew in advance what our demonstrator was making for the evening, so I tried to make something a little different to her flavours. The recipe formed and grew in my head as I was making them, and had a minor adjustment part way through.

To my regular vanilla cupcakes, I added two tablespoons of freeze dried strawberry powder. I baked them in the usual way, but the resulting cake was a little too subtle in flavour. Here's where they took a turn for the better: I decided to add a Strawberry creme  to the centre of each cupcake using Gobake Easy Frost and freeze dried strawberry powder. It's super easy, the recipe for creme is right there on the packet. Any unused portion can be stored in the fridge or frozen to make ice-cream like this. I used a Wilton bismark tip to fill the centre of the cupcakes (using Wilton's method, which you can see here).

To my buttercream icing recipe I added a few drops of Americolor pink gel paste colour and some Lorann champagne oil flavouring. It was piped with a simple 1m swirl (these cupcakes were all about the flavour not the decoration). We had a lot of items to taste test during our guild evening. These were a hit on the night and I will definitely be making them again.

Glamour Strawberries - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

This summer has started with strawberries in abundance! Use white candy melts for a really white snow-like coating. These melts are so simple to use they should be a staple ingredient in every pantry!

The 'Jewel Fire Red' colour of rainbow dust glitter matches ripe strawberries perfectly. You use such a tiny dusting each time that your 'little pot of strawberry glamour' will last for years. I dipped a dry paintbrush into the glitter and shook it gently over the drying chocolate.

This platter of strawberries looks festive and jolly with the addition of Christmas coloured pebbles stuck to white marshmallows. I used  a wee dot of the leftover white chocolate as glue. 

Importantly, the fine grains of this food contact glitter mean that they can't be tasted when eaten. 

I had a bunch of keen taste testers for this creation. Strawberries for morning tea at work - it doesn't get much better than this!