Menu Monday's On A Break

I am taking a little break from Menu Monday this week because the only new thing that I am cooking is Oven Chicken Risotto. I actually cooked that tonight, and it was really, really good. I had made it a long time ago, when it was actually in Southern Living, and then I promptly forgot about it until Margaret mentioned it.

But, I will share with you my accidental recipe for chocolate-covered strawberries. This is not scientific -- no specific amounts of anything -- but I have to say that my strawberries turned out delicious. And it was mostly thanks to my sister, Hunter.

Anyway, I started with some pretty strawberries. In fact, I was pretty impressed that they looked that good this early. I washed them and laid them out on paper towels to dry.

I looked up some recipes on allrecipes.com and tried to find the easiest one I could for making chocolate-covered strawberries. The one I found said to melt chocolate chips according to the package directions and dip in the strawberries.

I can totally do that!

So I got some chocolate chips...

And I started melting away according to package directions. However, my chocolate chips were semi-sweet (these were in the pantry), and I started to wonder if they would be too bitter on the strawberries. So, once the chocolate was nice and melted, I added a little bit of vanilla.

And the chocolate immediately hardened.

I started to panic, so I called my sister to see if she knew what to do. She told me to add milk, and then she told me about a trick that she learned watching Barefoot Contessa -- adding coffee grounds to chocolate will make the chocolate flavor really pop.

I took Hunter's advice on both counts, and I ended up with creamy, delicious melted chocolate:

That was when the real fun started because I could start dipping -- and tasting! I thought I had wax paper but didn't, so I had to make do with aluminum foil and some of my chocolate stuck, but the strawberries otherwise turned out beautifully:

And the best part is that they tasted fabulous! This is a really easy dessert, and they look great -- I think I am going to make them again for Tyler's birthday tea this weekend.

The only drawback was that I made these on Valentines Day, and my Valentine doesn't like strawberries (there is something wrong with him), so I pretty much ate all of the strawberries myself. Just call me Miss Piggy...