Valentine's Day strawberries

When it comes to romantic food it is difficult to go wrong with strawberries, chocolate and whipped cream (and not forgetting a nice bottle of champagne) and as this is our very first Valentine's Day as an engaged couple (he popped the question 5 days ago while we were on a long weekend break in Bangkok) I thought of treating my fiancé - love the way it sounds - to a romantic and relaxed evening at home.

For the main course I made simple homemade pizza and for dessert I went with the timeless classic. To be honest, I'd been looking at dessert recipes for months now to see if I could find anything special, but the choice hasn't been anything as good as one would have thought. Although we both love cakes (especially cheesecakes) it's quite pointless to make a cake that is meant for 12 as it will simply go off before we'll manage to eat it all. And on the other hand I needed something that I could make in advance as I'm coming home from a quite late lecture and I won't have time to prepare a dessert that will make few hours to make. So faced with all these problems I decided to go with the simple yet classic (and a bit of a cliche) option to serve strawberries. The more I thought of the idea the better it sounded - it can be made ahead, it looks delicious, tastes really nice and it's meant to be eaten with your fingers, meaning that the whole process can be very romantic as well.

So, long story short, this is a perfect treat for the loved one for any occasion you want them to feel special. Experiment with different chocolates and different flavours - sprinkle some nuts or cookie crumbs and drizzle with some (salted) caramel. I do realise that it is not a recipe per se, but it just looked so pretty that I could not resist sharing it with you.

Ingredients
- 450 fresh strawberries, washed, dried and leaves removed
- 200g white chocolate
- 70g dark chocolate
- Silver balls or other sprinkles for decorating
- Whipped cream, optional

Directions
Place the white chocolate in a bowl and put it over a pot of hot (nearly boiling) water and let it melt. Do the same with dark chocolate. In the meantime, wash and dry the strawberries.

To decorate dip most the strawberries into white chocolate and place on a plate covered with baking parchment (to prevent them from sticking). Sprinkle some of them with silver balls and drizzle other ones with dark chocolate and leave some plain white. Place another sheet of baking parchment on a separate plate and put the remaining strawberries there. Drizzle them all with dark chocolate and decorate some with silver balls.

Leave to set for a bit and then place them in a nice bowl and serve. If you wish, serve with fresh whipped cream on the side. Enjoy!