Chocolate Covered Strawberry Favors?

Question

I really love the idea of giving my guests something edible as a wedding favor. I think Chocolate Covered Strawberries would be a really elegant touch. However, they are expensive from a store. So, I'd like to make them myself. How much would this cost me? I'm having anywhere between 130-150 guests and I'd like to give 2 strawberries to each guest.

How much do you think this will cost (on average-since prices of food vary depending on where you live. Strawberries are about $4-$5 dollars a pound here).

Also, how difficult is this and how far in advance can I prepare them?

Answer 1

Definitely you would save money compared to buying from a store, online, having them shipped etc if you were just to cost out the strawberries you used.

Two points: They are easy to make at home-BUT they are best made as close to the wedding as possible, as strawberries have a short shelf life and start to look blech really quickly. This means you would be tying up your time the same morning or late the night before, with or without the help of friends/family.

The catch here is that you are doing about 300 strawberries as you said you wanted two per person. You cover the strawberries with chocolate so most of the strawberry is not visible, but you still want nice sized and good looking strawberries, well because it's your wedding and you don't want bruised or yucky favours for your guests. By the time you add up how many flats of strawberries you have to buy to get those 300 goodlooking strawberries, you probably aren't saving money.

Why do I know this? Well I am a chef in a resort/spa and we do tuxedo strawberries every day. On weekends when we have one or more weddings, quite often we do lots more- a couple of weekends ago I dipped 100 strawberries in chocolate for one wedding that wanted them as favours. To get just those 100 I went through 7 big flats of strawberries.

In as far as it being easy to do, it's not complicated -but I would say if you were only doing 20 or 30, not 300, I would advise it.

If you are still insistent on the idea and ignoring cost then go for it. Otherwise I would say try a tasty sugar cookie recipe- this is also cool. If you want something edible. Go to Michaels or some such place and get some 3 tiered wedding cake cookie cutters, or bells, or hearts or some shape cookie cutter, and then decorate them with icing (email me if you would like that route instead, I have a failproof recipe and do these cookies often), and 300 cookies cut out and decorated is not as bad and definitely cheaper than strawberries (plus you can make them well in advance and not stress out the day of/before weddinng).

If you still want to go the strawberry route I found these inst ructions to walk you through- ignore the tempered chocolate bit and just use chocolate couverture wafers (like at Michaels or bulk in your store) :http://www.mysweetandsaucy.com/2008/03/0...

Answer 2

Good heart, but it's in the wrong place here. You probably won't save a significant amount (maybe a few bucks), and you would have spent a lot of time making the favors, including putting them in the appropriate containers. You would have to have plenty of room in your fridge also. You can not make chocolate-covered strawberries more than a couple (MAYBE 3 or 4, but that's stretching it) days in advance, because they are very finicky. Too warm and they melt and get rancid. Too much time after dipping in chocolate, they get mushy. Also, if the temp in the fridge is not just right, the chocolate will sweat and start to separate from the berry. Fun stuff.

Answer 3

Okaii...

This is so easy to make!

Look for big strawberries cuz those are better!

I cant tell you the exact price because depends on

how many strawberries you get in a pound.,..

but its not expensive!

Oh and for the chocolate part!

Make sure you use chocolate chips!

Those are the best to melt!!

And easiest to use!

Answer 4

I was actually thinking you would save money. I like the idea. Why not do a trial run? Make a dozen...figure out your cost and then you can figure out if it will save you money. Even if it doesn't, well, who doesn't like chocolate covered strawberries...YUMMY!!!

I like white chocolate ones, too!

Answer 5

I'm not sure of cost or anything, but I would imagine they'd have to be made pretty close to the wedding and do you really want to be working on that?  Maybe cookies would be a better option?  I was going to do them, but then decided to make a donation on behalf of our guests to a charity we loved and they provided us cards for each seat with a sweet saying about the donation.

The strawberry idea is cool, I just wouldn't want you stressing about that when you have more important things to do, you know?

Good luck with everything!