The first time I realized a white chocolate dipped strawberry looks like a Cybeman’s head, I giggled like the voices that whisper messages via my dental fillings had just given me next week’s lottery numbers. Those simplified faces make this a delightfully easy, instantly recognizable dessert. Making your own is also a heck of a lot cheaper than buying chocolate dipped strawberries and drawing faces on them. Honest.
White Chocolate Cyberman Heads
12 large strawberries
6 oz/170 g white melting chocolate
6 oz/170 g dark melting chocolate (optional)
black icing pen
large metal paper clips (optional)
edible silver spray paint (optional)
This recipe will require a trip to your local craft store..
There, you’ll find all kinds of melting chocolate, edible spray paint, precision sizes of icing pens, and all the tools needed to bake the amazing cakes that are so trendy these days Luckily, you can use these for the far simpler process of decorating Cyberman heads.
Most people will tell you to put the melting chocolate in the top part of a double boiler and stir slowly and constantly until you reach your desired texture. However, my local craft store has a huge aisle of microwavable melting chocolate. If you don’t have a double boiler, this stuff is magic. Just put it in a microwave safe glass bowl, nuke it for a few seconds, massage the bag, nuke some more, and within minutes, those of you who don’t own double boilers can achieve the same effect. Modernity is awesome.
However you choose to do it, melt your chocolate. You want to get it just runny enough to stick to your strawberries. Too hot and it’ll burn, which results in all kinds of nastiness.
Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil or wax paper then spritz it with nonstick spray. Hold your strawberries by the green stem and dip them in your melted chocolate. Roll them around a little to make sure you have good coverage. Lay each strawberry gently on your baking sheet to cool.
Flavor-wise, I personally like to dip my strawberries in a thick layer of dark chocolate first, let them cool, then dip them in white chocolate to finish. If you’re a big white chocolate fan, feel free to just dunk them in the white stuff.
Regardless of what’s underneath, once they have a nice, white surface, gently draw on a circle for the eyes. If you’re good at drawing, you can use a toothpick to tug some of the icing down in the corner of each eye to make the fake tear effect on our sad Cybermen. Draw a diagonal line under each eye for the cheekbones, then a straight line down to the mouth. For the mouth, just draw a simple rectangular box. Connect up your top lines so they form a bridge over the eyes.
You can try to finish the CyberBerry by unfolding a metal paper clip and rearranging it into the shape of the squared head antenna. In theory, you should be able to just plug the paperclip into each side of your Cyberman’s head. In reality, paperclips are a lot sturdier than I anticipated. You’re likely to squish a lot of berries. Worse yet, the antannae have an annoying habit of refusing to stay in position. Feel free to try. If you can pull it off, it looks fantastic. If you can’t, don’t stress. The painted berries look great.
If you’re feeling extra schmancy, after your chocolate dries but before you decorate the face, you can spray the berries with edible silver paint. I can never decide which effect I like better. People giggle more at the silver berries, but they’re also less likely to eat them. If you want to have tasty strawberries left after your party, go for the paint. If you made too many and just need to get rid of them all, leave them unpainted. Either way, you’ll still get compliments for their cuteness.