How To Make Chocolate Covered Strawberries Last Longer

How to Freeze Chocolate Covered Strawberries – Many people are surprised to find out that you can actually freeze chocolate covered strawberries. If you know you aren’t going to finish the berries within the next 24 or 48 hours, your best bet is to freeze them. Chocolate covered strawberries can last up to three months in the freezer.

• However, you must freeze — and defrost — them correctly for the best results.
• Before piling them into the freezer, it’s best to “flash freeze” your berries to prevent them from sticking together in a giant clump when frozen.
• To do this, place the chocolate covered strawberries on a parchment-lined cookie sheet in a single layer, leaving plenty of space between the strawberries.

Freeze for about three hours or until they are solid. Once they’re sufficiently frozen, you can place them in a freezer container or bag. Frozen berries are the one instance you want to ensure an airtight seal to prevent freezer burn, so be sure to use a bag or container that has been designed for freezer use.

1. When you’re ready to enjoy the chocolate covered strawberries, you can defrost them in the fridge for an hour.
2. You don’t want to defrost the strawberries completely or they can become mushy and watery.
3. Instead, let them partially defrost in the refrigerator.
4. Then enjoy them while they’re still a little cold.

They’ll retain their crunch, while still providing you with plenty of juicy flavor. Understanding how long chocolate covered strawberries last and how to best store them can help you plan ahead with your chocolate covered strawberry treats. Maybe you’ve just received a delicious arrangement like our A Berry Sweet Bundle or our Chocolate Dipped Indulgence Platter,

How do you preserve chocolate covered strawberries?

How to Keep Chocolate Covered Strawberries Fresh Cavan Images/Getty Images By Heath Goldman for Food Network Kitchen Chances are, if you’re reading this article you’ve mastered, or you’ve received a chocolate covered strawberry delivery (lucky you).

Now that you’ve got the strawberries, you need to figure out how to keep those beauties fresh. The fact of the matter is: chocolate covered strawberries are best the first day you make or receive them. Many recipes will ask you to transfer them to the refrigerator to speed up the chocolate-setting process.

But if you plan on eating them the first day, you’ll want to then remove them from the refrigerator and store them on the counter at room temperature. This way, they won’t sweat or weep. Chocolate covered strawberries keep best stored on the counter with a loose draping of plastic wrap.

Given that chocolate covered strawberries are the best stored at room temperature, you might be wondering how long they can be kept that way. You can leave them on the counter for about one day. If you’re planning on saving your chocolate covered strawberries for more than one day, yep, they’ll need to be refrigerated.

Unfortunately, this means that they will sweat a little bit. To minimize sweating, place a couple sheets of paper towels into the bottom of an airtight container. Store the strawberries on top of the paper towels. If you need to store multiple layers of strawberries, place pieces of wax paper or parchment paper between the layers.

• They will typically last for up to two days in the refrigerator.
• They may last longer though.
• Simply inspect the strawberries: if the chocolate has fallen off or the tops of the strawberries appear mushy, you’ll probably want to toss them.
• We don’t recommend you freeze these strawberries because honestly? The strawberries will become mushy when they thaw.

And no one wants that. Related Links: : How to Keep Chocolate Covered Strawberries Fresh

Should I put chocolate covered strawberries in the fridge or freezer?

Can Chocolate Covered Strawberries Be Frozen? – No. The chocolate covered strawberries have to harden in the fridge, not the freezer. If you risk the strawberries to freeze they will be rock hard and you won’t be able to give them a bite. PLUS, once they thaw they get mushy and release all their water into the chocolate and that’s not a nice thing to look at and the taste suffers from it, too.

How do you keep chocolate from melting from seizing?

How to fix seized chocolate – Seized chocolate won’t go back to its original form, unfortunately. So if your heart was set on coating juicy fruit with delicious pure chocolate, you’ll have to start from scratch with a new batch. But fortunately, if you’re willing to get creative, it doesn’t have to be the end of the line for your seized chocolate.

1. One method you can use is mixing teaspoons of boiling water into your seized chocolate over a double boiler.
2. Add the teaspoons one at a time, mixing thoroughly each time, until your chocolate is liquid again.
3. The diluted chocolate won’t be suitable for recipes that call for pure chocolate, but it will work just fine for hot chocolate, drizzling, making sauces, and mixing into recipes that contain enough liquid.

Did you know that the cacao percentage of the chocolate can also have an effect on how it seizes? If you’re melting chocolate into a sauce or other mixture, the higher the cacao percentage is, the more liquid you need to add to stop the chocolate from seizing.

Why do my chocolate covered strawberries taste like alcohol?

Old strawberries can get boozy – In the meantime, you might notice an alcohol-y flavor in older strawberries. That happens because cells inside of the strawberry, still living and breathing, can’t get the oxygen they need to keep running the strawberry engine (Yep, oxygen.

• The strawberry plant takes in carbon dioxide and releases oxygen for daytime photosynthesis, but takes in oxygen for round-the-clock respiration).
• So, they resort to no-oxygen-required fermentation as a backup energy source.
• Fermentation produces alcohol.
• A high internal alcohol content can make a strawberry taste like a vodka shot.

As strawberries age, they also give up some of their best stuff. So, you’ll get less Vitamin C from a strawberry like the ones pictured here, but with fiber and other components, it won’t be a complete nutritional wasteland. So, give it an assessing nibble and then make an informed choice.

Cecilia N. Nunes, Ph.D. Associate Professor. Food Quality Laboratory. Department of Cell Biology, Microbiology and Molecular Biology. University of South Florida Emily Therese Cloyd. Botanist What’s in your strawberries? Simon Cotton. Education in Chemistry. Royal Society of Chemistry. A methodology for assessing the quality of fruit and vegetables. Doctoral Thesis. Azodanlou, Ramin. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.2001. Gain and Loss of Fruit Flavor Compounds Produced by Wild and Cultivated Strawberry Species, Asaph Aharoni, Ashok P. Giri, Francel W.A. Verstappen, Cinzia M. Bertea, Robert Sevenier, Zhongkui Sun, Maarten A. Jongsma, Wilfried Schwab, Harro J. Bouwmeester. November 2004. The Plant Cell. American Society of Plant Biologists Fermentation. Britannica. Fruit Quality, Fermentation Products, and Activities of Associated Enzymes During Elevated CO2 Treatment of Strawberry Fruit at High and Low Temperatures. Jianzhi Jenny Zhang and Christopher B. Watkins. Cornell University. Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science.2005. Abscisic acid and sucrose regulate tomato and strawberry fruit ripening through the abscisic acid‐stress‐ripening transcription factor. Plant Biotechnology Journal.2016 Oct; 14(10): 2045–2065. Haifeng Jia, Songtao Jiu, Cheng Zhang, Chen Wang, Pervaiz Tariq, Zhongjie Liu, Baoju Wang, Liwen Cui, and Jinggui Fang Metabolic Processes in Harvested Products. Author: Kay. Accessed via the University of Florida website.

Strawberries give you that sinking feeling?