Chocolate-dipped Strawberry Carrots for Easter

Hoppy Easter everyone!  Last night my friend Sarah came over for strawberry dipping. She had seen these adorable orange chocolate-dipped strawberries on the cover of the Harry and David catalog and so we set out to recreate them. Also Sarah HAD given up sugar for lent but let's just say the fast was over a tad early!!!

Harry and David Version:

So this is what we did.  Some notes ahead of time.
1. Get medium strawberries and if you are picking them yourself, make sure to keep the leaves and even some stem on them to grasp while dipping.
2. Wash and dry thoroughly before dipping. Bring to room temp if they have been refrigerated.
3. Set out cookie sheets with parchment for drying dipped strawberries
4. We got about 24 strawberries out of a double recipe of chocolate plus a bunch of peanut butter filled pretzels
5. Making the little carrot lines seemed difficult.  Read on..

Ok here is the recipe we used for making the double recipe of chocolate: 2lb white chocolate morsels+ 2tablespoons shortening.  Place in double boiler over med heat to melt and stir.  Add food coloring to desired color.  Don't bother using toothpicks to hold strawberries.  They will just pull right out. Grasp strawberry by the stem and dip to cover. We found the chocolate in the double boiler cooled pretty quickly so some of our berries were a tad lumpy (but still delicious!) and you have to stir the chocolate and dip quickly.  Place on parchment to dry.

We contemplated making the carrot lines but decided against it.  We felt like if the chocolate were melty enough to drizzle from a pastry bag or snipped ziplock that it would be too hot to handle and if it were cool enough to handle it wouldn't be drizzly enough.  Maybe we could have used a fork to splatter the chocolate on but it certainly wouldn't be very controlled.

Since we are heading to a friend's house for Easter, I decided to make a Carrot Garden Dirt Pie.  I used this recipe for the "dirt." I've forgotten where i read this recipe originally but there are recipes all over the internet that are pretty similar.

14oz-16oz oreos
8oz cream cheese
1/2 butter softened
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2tsp vanilla
5.9 oz pkg instant pudding chocolate (or vanilla)
3 cups milk
1 pkg cool whip

1. Use food processor to chop oreos (cream and all) into small pieces.
2. Cream together cream cheese, butter, sugar and vanilla.
3. In large bowl add milk to pudding and mix together.  Fold in cool whip.
4. Add butter mixture to Pudding mixture and mix well.

Alternate layers of cookies and pudding in a large glass pan. Top with layer of cookie dirt. I used a deep dish casserole dish and it just barely fit everything!

To decorate, I used a wine stopper to depress cone-shaped depressions in the "dirt" to set the "carrots" into.   added some gummy worms for fun!  Enjoy!!