A delicious, easy to make chocolate treat!

Who doesn’t love a homemade sweet treat? I love to use my vintage cookbooks for inspiration when finding a fun recipe to make. One recipe that kept coming up over and over again was petit fours. Such beautiful and fun little dessert. Our Chocolate Strawberry Bites recipe is inspired by petit fours, and are so tasty!

Gather Your Ingredients

To make your own chocolate strawberry bites you first need pound cake. You can purchase a pound cake that has already been baked from your local grocery store, but cutting it may be tricky. I found it so easy to purchase (or mix your own) pound cake mix. I did adjust the baking directions a bit, instead of baking the pound cake as a loaf as the box directed, I poured my pound cake mixture into 2 greased 9″ x 9″ cake pans, and baked them for a few minutes longer than the mini loaves noted on the box. The pound cake came out perfectly! You want to use pound cake, because it can hold up to the chocolate coating you add to your chocolate strawberry bites.

You will also need a jam filling for your chocolate strawberry bites. Sadly we are out of strawberry jam from last summer (we will make more this year!), so we had to purchase strawberry jam, but it tasted great! You will also need about 2-3 cups of milk chocolate chips (a 12 oz bag is a good size to have on hand), 2-3 tablespoons of shortening or coconut oil, and sprinkles which are optional. That’s it, so easy!

Assembling Your Bites

Go ahead and bake your pound cakes if you are making them, and allow them to cool completely. To make cutting easier I placed my pound cakes into the freezer for 2 hours.

Next you will need to cut your pound cake in half, long ways. You can use a cake cutter, or a long serrated knife. If you need help to keep your cut straight, use some toothpicks to mark your way around.

After you have cut your cake across, carefully remove the top layer. Cover the bottom layer with a thin layer of strawberry jam. You can also add fresh cut thin sliced strawberries with the jam!

After you add your jam, go ahead and place the top piece of cake back on top. You can now cut your pound cake into “bite” for your chocolate strawberry bites. How you want to cut your bites is totally up to you. You can simply cut your pound cake into 1″ squares. You can also use a cutter, like our biscuit cutter to get some fun designs! Pop your cut cake pieces back into the freezer for 30 minutes, while you are preparing your chocolate coating. This will help with extra crumbs when covering your cake bites with chocolate.

Time for Chocolate!

Traditional petit fours call for various coatings including buttercream, and confectionary coating. These are suggested because they harden into a nice shell over the cake. One method I learned, and love to use to make my own confectionary coating is to mix 1 cup of milk chocolate chips, with 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon of shortening. This mixture gives you a nice, hard shell on your chocolate strawberry bites. Some use coconut oil as well. The great thing about this is you can mix up however much you need, just by doubling or tripling the ratio of chocolate chips to shortening.

While your cake bites are cooling off for a moment, melt your chocolate chips and shortening using your favorite melting method. You can use a double boiler, or carefully melt the chocolate a little bit at a time in your microwave.

After your chocolate is all melted, get your cake bites from the freezer, and place them onto a cooling rack with a baking sheet underneath. You are going to pour the chocolate over the bite, and all the extra will drip down to the tray below. Move carefully, and quickly to cover the cake bites completely. Use a small spatula to help the chocolate around the sides of the cake bites. Your chocolate sets up quickly, so don’t “mess” with the chocolate too much as the cake bites are coated. You can add some sprinkles while the chocolate is drying as well.

Time to Enjoy!

Allow your chocolate strawberry cake bites time to harden completely before removing them from the cooling rack, carefully. If you would like you can cover the bottom of your chocolate strawberry bites with some extra melted chocolate, and place them on some parchment to dry, but that is totally optional!

Move your chocolate strawberry bites to a serving tray, and share with your friends and family! They will be so impressed with this delicious and fun treat! Happy Baking!