Tuxedo Strawberries and Chocolate Boxes

This afternoon, I went with my mum to the TOSA Chocolate Box and Tuxedo Strawberry Making event at Pennsylvania House. I have to say, it was a lot of fun!

We all started with a piece of parchment paper, three strawberries from Whole Foods, and a cup of white chocolate. With the white chocolate, we dipped out strawberries in. The white chocolate was the shirt under the tuxedo.

As you can see in the pictures, there are places where there are blobs of chocolate. That happened because we had to move the strawberries so that the base could start to harden as we kept moving them.

My mum and I with a white chocolate dipped strawberry!

Then we were given a paper bowl with dark chocolate, let me tell you; it was no normal dark chocolate. It was mint dark chocolate and it smelled delicious. We took our strawberries and then dipped two sides into the mint dark chocolate in order to make the jacket of the tuxedo.

Again, we had to move the strawberries so that the base could harden. Lastly for the strawberries, we used a small paper icing pipe in order to pipe the bow ties and buttons in order to complete the tuxedos.

Aren't they dapper?!

Now it is time for the Chocolate Box. Dun DUN DUN!!

First off we started with a transfer sheet. The sheets we used had hearts on them which timed out perfectly since it is Valentine's Day soon. We had to tape these to the table since we needed to anchor it down.

Next, Senior (our teacher) who is a Senior Chief Culinary Specialist ladled some mint dark chocolate onto our sheets. We then used an off-set spatula so that we could spread the chocolate.

After spreading the chocolate.

Since the finish of the chocolate was shiny, we had to wait for it to show a matte finish. Once the chocolate was displaying a matte finish, we were ready to cut the shapes in. 

We used these two card stock shapes in order to cut the lid and sides out. We cut it with a sharp knife. 

This was the finished product once the shapes were cut out. We let them sit a bit longer because the chocolate was still very delicate.

While we were waiting for the chocolate, Senior made a zebra like strawberry and showed how to make shapes with the piper. While we wear watching Senior, I was picking at my chocolate along the edges.

These are the bits I picked off around the edges.

After we had some lunch, we went back to assemble our boxes.

We used a bowl of chocolate as our glue. We then dipped the sides of the walls that touched so that it could glue itself to the next side of the box. 

Once the gluing was done, Senior then filled the inside of the box with a floor of chocolate.

After moving it, it was a beautiful floor of our box. We then put these in the fridge so that it could harden twice as fast.

And voila!

The finished box. I know you can't see the strawberries very well but you know what they look like on from the photos above.