The pairing of chocolate and strawberry is a delicious one. But after filling up on "plain old" dipped strawberries, and heck that alone can take a lifetime as I have plenty of experience, you can nonetheless choose to expand your palette and cooking repertoire by incorporating the essence and flavor of chocolate covered strawberries in different and exciting ways.

The first obvious idea is to top sliced strawberries on a decadent chocolate cake. You can look online for lots of recipes for a cake should your personal book library not suffice. Or there's always great subscriptions to nice magazines like Food and Wine or Cooking Light that offer good dessert reads. Don't forget about the magazines more suited to desserts and pastry too!

But for a strawberry-topped cake, this gives the cake lovers more of the moistness and volume to fill up for their dessert appetites and still provides a bit of the fruit accent. And as a red garnish on top of a very dark cake, it adds a bit of wow factor and dimension.

You can strengthen, spice, and stiffen up your strawberry chocolate partnerships by mixing in a little liquor. Some recipes infuse Grand Marnier in a small dose to reduce with the berries and give that richness without really having a significant amount of alcohol in the final product. This will give you the cognac brandy flavor with orange hints along with the strawberry and chocolate. I think this is a delightful combination myself. The liquor burns off in the cooking process somewhat, leaving the flavor and experience without the buzz. This is a flavor profile that adds layers to your food enjoyment experience.

A strawberry mousse cake is a welcome option too. This will provide a greater strawberry percentage as most recipes call for several cups of strawberries placed around a cake's perimeter.. And you're still getting about 12 ounces to a full pound of chocolate folded in to the whipped cream to create the mousse. You can always go with a straight strawberry cake as well. Of course you'd be missing out on the chocolate entirely, and I say where is the fun in that? But you can simply flip the order by having a cake or pie filled with the strawberries and go with a small plunk of chocolate mousse, a squirt of chocolate syrup, or even some melted chocolate from the stove drizzled gently over the strawberry dessert. Is your mouth watering yet? It's a tempting set of things to make.

And that is what desserts and cooking in totality is really all about. Adding up layer upon layer of flavor in subtle ways. The eater can consciously or subconsciously realize a superb symphony of flavor. Yet they have a challenge describing what exactly all the ingredients are in the dish. It's the undercurrent and hint and sophistication of extra touches that leaves the person wanting more. This is a learned skill that takes some dedication and a little more time, but it's worth it. And it's not that hard to develop a great set of skills and trust in the kitchen with your own abilities. And who wouldn't want to make five or ten variations using these fantastic chocolate and strawberry ingredients to discover what works best. Tell you what, time to head over to the kitchen and brush up on my technique right now.


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