Isn't this so fancy? And it was totally easy! I used my awesome Chocolate Treat Maker, but you can easily rig up a double boiler! Although I would suggest buying a gadget for melting if you plan to do a lot this sort of thing. It's are great, it keeps the chocolate a a nice even temp for a long time! I saw the Wilton version on sale at Home Goods the other day.
Well here is how to rig up you double boiler. You will need a small saucepan and a bowl that can fit over it without falling in.
Put some water in the pan, but make sure it is not touching the bottom of the bowl. We are going to use steam to melt our chocolate, not the water. You want to heat up the water, not boil it. (contrary to the name) If the chocolate gets too hot it will burn and that's yucky. If the water starts to bowl just turn off the flame There will still be enough steam heat to keep the chocolate melted.
Now to the fun part; dipping! For the strawberries make sure to wash and dry them ahead of time. You need them to be absolutely dry for the chocolate to adhere. After you dunk them, place them on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Then put the filled sheet in the fridge to set.
You do the pretzels the same way. I broke mine in half to get a better chocolate to pretzel ratio. Just make sure to dunk the jagged edge!
Of course they will taste just as good without decoration, but I think it adds a little something. It makes them look more professional. You can just drizzle the dark and white chocolate with a spoon, which leads to varying stripe width. If you are more OCD you can put the chocolate in a Ziploc, snip the end off, and then use that to add the lines.
I would not recommend ever microwaving real chocolate, it can burn too easy. But zapping those candy melts is fine.
Candy melts are quick way to add a pop of color. You could do green stripes for St. Patty's Day, red and pink for Valentines and so on. I think they taste kinda funny, but if used in small quantities you don't notice.
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