VALENTINE'S DAY-PERFECT Chocolate Dipped Strawberries & Healthy Chocolate Cheesecake!

                                                            

One tradition I started when Michael and I first got married is making chocolate dipped strawberries for Valentine's day. When he proposed on Feb 13, along with the ring was a gorgeous box of Godiva chocolate strawberries. So, besides being pretty to look at and tasty, they are symbolic in our marriage. I started out doing it just the regular way of melting chocolate bark and dipping it in. Have you ever found that when you do that, you take one bite and ALL the chocolate falls off the strawberry? 

A couple years ago, I was cooking some other candy at Christmas with a recipe out of an OLD cookbook. It had something mixed in with the chocolate that I thought was crazy! But I tried it, and have made everything chocolate dipped that way to this day. Works out perfect every time!

The secret is adding a little something called Gulf Wax. Our granny's used it back in the day when they canned as a sealer. You can find in the baking aisle by the canning supplies and it is cheap! It binds the chocolate together and to the strawberry so the experience is not messy and you get a bite of chocolate with every bite of strawberry!

Ingredients:

1 lb fresh strawberries

1/2 bag of chocolate chips of your choice- I like Hershey Special Dark the best

1/3 block of Gulf Wax (it comes 4 blocks to a package, the rest will keep in your pantry for ages!)

wax paper

toothpicks

Prep:

1. Rinse your strawberries and lay them out to dry on a clean towel. They have to be REALLY dry.

2. Lay a piece of wax paper on a cookie sheet next to where you will be dipping the strawberries.

3. Make sure your strawberries are dry before starting to melt chocolate. Insert a toothpick into each strawberry through the top.  Chop your 1/3 block of wax into 3-4 pieces.

4. Place wax pieces in a medium saucepan  and turn on med heat. (I use an old cheap, stainless steel one so chocolate doesn't melt onto my nonstick ones. I also finds it melts quicker and more evenly in a old thin one instead of new fancy heavy one.)

5. When wax is almost melted, turn to med low heat and and chocolate pieces. Stir with a wooden spoon until is all is melted together. 

6. Once everything is melted, turn your heat to low. 

7. To dip, pick up the toothpick with one hand and the pan with the other. Dip in the strawberry just right up to the green. Hold over the chocolate and swirl to let excess drip off. 

8. Place on wax paper. Repeat until all strawberries are dipped. Place cookie sheet in fridge to set. Should be set in 1-2 hours.

*I usually have enough chocolate left to dip a few bananas and raspberries or any other fruit I may have around. Pears are amazing too! You could even dip some graham crackers or other cookies if you have them!

As for the cheesecake recipe, I can take NO credit for this. I printed it off the Eating Well Website. It is totally sinful and amazing and much lower in fat & sugar than your traditional cheesecake. It puts the Cheesecake Factory plain Splenda cheesecake to shame!

The only things I changed were instead of the chocolate coffee beans for garnish it calls for, I used a little lite Cool Whip in the can and fresh raspberries. And for the 'chocolate wafers' it calls for in the crust, I wasn't sure what they meant so I used chocolate graham crackers. You will need exactly 1 of the plastic packages inside of a full box. 

EatingWell Chocolate Truffle Cheesecake