Red, White and Blue – Dipped Strawberries

Now that I’ve learned that strawberries are going to change my life for the better, I have finding all kinds of new ways to incorporate them into my diet. This might be one of my favorites — although I’m not sure it’s quite what the David Grotto had in mind. Oh well. The Princess Cupcake had a blast making these for her class. And it couldn’t have been any easier, or patriotic as far as fruit goes.

So simple. All you need is:

• strawberries
• white chocolate candy melts
• blue shimmer sugar

Be sure to use your Michaels/JoAnn’s coupons to get your candy melts and sugar on sale!

Here’s what you do:

1. Wash and dry the strawberries.
2. Pour sugar into small bowl.
3. Melt the candy according to the package (I use a candy melter like you see on the Amazon carousel on the right).
4. Dip the strawberries in half way or so.
5. Then dip into the colored sugar.
6. Put on a plate covered with waxed paper to harden.

What I learned:
This was the PERFECT activity to do with my 3 year old. Because of the leaves on the strawberry, she could dip the fruit in without getting her fingers near the hot candy. And she is a pro at dipping things in sugar so it worked out great. She kept yelling, “I’m going to get the biggest one!” before she’d grab a new berry to drop in. She had a blast and I had to do nearly nothing. What’s better than that?!

We ran out of sugar, so she — using her powers of deductive reasoning — suggested we use sprinkles. Equally festive, although not patriotic as ours were the multi-colored ones but they worked out great. When we ran out of strawberries, we started dipping blackberries and wow, those were AWESOME. I would suggest using red sparkle sugar on those. We were still using up sprinkles so we stuck with those, but I think you could keep the red, white and blue theme going with some red fo’ sho’.

Do not run out of waxed paper in the middle of this project. I did and some of the berries weren’t fully covered in the sugar so when we tried to lift them off the bare cookie sheet, they stuck. Ugh. I currently have them in the refrigerator to see if that makes it easier — or harder — to remove from the cookie sheet.

All-in-all, a FAST, cute patriotic dessert for the upcoming July 4th weekend. Enjoy!