Chocolate-Dipped Strawberries

Dry strawberries are essential - even a drop of water makes chocolate seize. Room temperature berries dip better than cold. Quality chocolate matters - use at least 60% cacao. Work quickly while chocolate is fluid. Gold dust and fancy toppings elevate the presentation.

The two components of this dessert have histories separated by centuries, oceans, and civilisations. Cacao was first cultivated by the ancient Olmec civilisation in Mesoamerica as early as 1750 BCE, according to Godiva's documented chocolate history; the Mayan people were the first to make it into a drink, and the Aztecs — who called it xocolātl, meaning "bitter water" — prized cacao beans so highly they used them as currency, paying tribute in them and offering them in religious ceremonies. Spanish conquistadors brought cacao to Europe in the 16th century, where the addition of sugar transformed it from a bitter ceremonial drink into the sweet luxury that would eventually become solid chocolate. The modern cultivated strawberry is far younger: the large, sweet variety available today is a hybrid of two wild species, the North American Fragaria virginiana and the Chilean Fragaria chiloensis, developed by a French botanist in Brittany in the 18th century. Wild strawberries were known in ancient Rome and across medieval Europe, but the commercial strawberry as we know it is an 18th-century creation. The combination of the two — chocolate and strawberry — is attributed by most culinary historians to a woman named Lorraine Lorusso, who in the 1960s worked at a small gourmet candy shop called Stop N' Shop in Chicago. According to the account that has circulated most widely, she tempered the gourmet chocolate sold in the store and dipped fresh strawberries into it, and the response from customers was immediate. In 1966, Godiva introduced Belgian-style chocolate to the American market, helping to establish the association between premium chocolate-dipped strawberries and luxury celebration.