Chocolate covered strawberries are a delicious treat that can be snacked on at any time and also gifted to other people on special occasions. The sweet blend of chocolate and strawberry is loved by many people. You can buy them at the store or simply make them yourself at home.
The process of making chocolate covered strawberries is quite easy – just get all the needed ingredients and dip the treat in your favorite toppings. One thing I like about chocolate covered strawberries is that they’re easy to access; many stores sell them.
Assuming you’ve been gifted with a reasonably large amount of chocolate covered strawberries, and you can’t finish them at once, what do you do? You cannot leave them to sit at room temperature for so long because they’ll start going bad after some time. The strawberries don’t do well when they’re subjected to room temperature. Taking these factors into consideration, you’ll need a long-term means of preserving your chocolate covered strawberries.
Since freezing works for so many other food items, can you freeze chocolate covered strawberries? Yes, you can freeze chocolate covered strawberries. In fact, when done correctly, freezing will preserve the life of chocolate covered strawberries for up to 3 months. There are certain steps that must be taken if you want to get the best results out of freezing chocolate covered strawberries.
One of such steps is pre-freezing the treats. This is an important step that should be done first before the final packaging of the chocolate covered strawberries. This article contains the relevant information you need on how to freeze chocolate covered strawberries – just make sure you follow the given steps correctly.
Freezing Chocolate Covered Strawberries
Since strawberries can’t be left at room temperature for long, freezing is your best shot at preserving your chocolate covered strawberries. If you’ve had to waste a sweet batch of these treats before because you didn’t know how to preserve them, you can avoid that wastage this time around.
Chocolate covered strawberries will last up to 3 months in the freezer; which is a pretty long time of preservation. Whenever you have a craving or want to serve guests, simply take out the portions you need and defrost them.
Make sure that you follow the correct steps when freezing your batch of chocolate covered strawberries – that is how you can be guaranteed of quality long-term storage.
How to Freeze Chocolate Covered Strawberries
Now that you know freezing works for chocolate covered strawberries, here’s how to go about it:
Step 1: Pre-Freeze the Batch of Chocolate Covered Strawberries
The first step is to pre-freeze the chocolate covered strawberries. This step is important because it prevent the individual strawberries from sticking to each other and causing difficulties with thawing later on. Pre-freezing will also ensure that the strawberries do not lose their original texture.
To pre-freeze the chocolate covered strawberries, follow these steps:
- Grab a baking sheet and line its bottom with some wax paper. The wax paper will prevent the chocolate covered strawberries from sticking to the sheet’s base during pre-freezing.
- Then proceed to spread the chocolate covered strawberries on the lined baking sheet. Make sure that the strawberries aren’t touching each other so that they won’t end up sticking together in the freezer.
- Place the baking sheet with the treats inside the freezer for about 4 hours so that they’ll get solidly frozen. Make sure that the chocolate covered strawberries aren’t covered during the pre-freezing process.
- After the treats are solidly frozen, take them out of the freezer for packaging.
Step 2: Transfer the Chocolate Covered Strawberries into Freezer-Safe Bags
After pre-freezing the treats, the next step is to put them in freezer-safe bags. So as to avoid waste on a later date, it is best to divide the treats into smaller portions that can be finished at once. That way, you won’t be having leftovers after thawing the frozen treats on a future date.
Grab a sufficient amount of resealable freezer-safe bags and transfer the treats into them. You’ll need to remove as much air as possible from each freezer bag. The air can be removed with the assistance of a vacuum sealing machine or through manual methods. To remove air manually, simply pass a straw into the bag through its opening and suck out as much of the air as you can. After removing the air, quickly seal off the bag’s lid so that no air escapes back in.
The vacuuming process is done to prevent the burning impact of cold freezer air.
Step 3: Label the Packaging and Keep in Safely Freezer
After vacuuming and sealing the freezer-safe bags, go ahead to write the present date on them with a marker. The current date is written so that you would easily know how long the chocolate covered strawberries have been frozen for.
Place the freezer-safe bags in a clear freezer compartment. You can even stack multiple bags on top of each order to save some space.
How to Thaw Frozen Chocolate Covered Strawberries
After freezing for some time, you’ll eventually want to eat some of the delicious chocolate covered strawberries that you froze. However, you’ll need to defrost them first. Defrosting the frozen treats can be done by simply leaving them to thaw for half an hour in the refrigerator. Alternatively, the frozen chocolate covered strawberries can also be left to sit at room temperature for about an hour to defrost.
If you don’t mind the cold taste of frozen chocolate covered strawberries, you can eat the directly without thawing them first – they are also delicious this way.
Conclusion
Freezing works great for chocolate covered strawberries. Now that you know about it, you can easily buy a large batch of these delicious treats and leave them to keep for months in the freezer. Make sure you follow the simple steps given in this article for the best freezing results. You can also apply the given information to chocolate covered strawberries that you made yourself at home.