Chocolate Covered Strawberry Sundae – Strawberry ice cream is covered with roasted strawberries and a homemade chocolate shell and garnished with chocolate covered strawberries

And just like that, National Ice Cream month is coming to an end. Don’t be sad that it’s over – be happy that it happened! Just think about all the insane recipes you experienced this month. Which one was your favorite? I’m torn between the fudge brownie ice cream and today’s recipe…chocolate covered strawberry ice cream. Are you surprised that my favorite recipes from this month both have chocolate? Yeah, me either. 

Now, let’s talk about this chocolate covered strawberry sundae. 

This sundae is the perfect mixture of all the things that make chocolate covered strawberries so perfect: contrasting juicy and crunchy textures, balanced flavors, and, 0f course, chocolate!

The Ingredients

Don’t let the spectacularness of this sundae fool you – it’s actually extremely simple to make. The ice cream base is strawberry ice cream, for which I used store-bought. When I am creating sundaes, I like to focus on the toppings so I left the ice cream development for another day and bought ice cream instead of making my own. 

The toppings, on the other hand, are all homemade. Let’s discuss them in more detail, shall we?

Fresh vs Roasted Strawberries

When creating this sundae, I had to decide how I wanted my strawberries to be served. Do I want a strawberry sauce or real strawberries? To keep the integrity of the treat that inspired this treat, I decided that real strawberries were a must. 

My next decision was whether to do fresh strawberries or cooked. This comparison was a little trickier. I had to rely on my experiences with berries and ice cream in the past. Whenever adding fresh berries to my frozen yogurt, I always remembered how quickly the berries would freeze to almost a solid form. I wasn’t a fan of that texture – I wanted the berries to stay juicy and tender. Therefore, roasted strawberries were the way to go. 

To make these berries, you simply toss whole berries with sugar and lemon juice, then roast for about 15 minutes to release the natural juices from the berries and create a delicious sauce. The sauce and the berries create a perfect topping for this sundae. 

Homemade Chocolate Shell

The next topping to consider was the chocolate sauce. I could have made a hot fudge sauce because, who doesn’t love hot fudge? However, I wanted the crunch of chocolate to be present in this sundae and hot fudge wasn’t going to provide that. 

Chocolate shell sauce, however, was going to provide that. Chocolate shell is a sauce that starts out as liquid but magically turns solid as soon as it hits the cold ice cream, almost like magic! But there’s nothing magic about it – it’s made with 3 simple ingredients: chocolate, coconut oil, and corn syrup. You simply melt them together, let the sauce cool back down to room temperature, and them spoon over ice cream and watch it turn solid!

Tips & Tricks

As always, here are a couple tricks to ensure this sundae tastes just as perfect as it should:

1. The chocolate shell should be made with refined coconut oil to ensure a neutral, non-coconut flavor. You can find this in the same part of the grocery store as the other varieties of oils. 
2. In order for the chocolate shell to turn solid, it must be room temperature before adding to the ice cream. Therefore, make sure it’s not still warm from heating in the microwave. 
3. The strawberries taste so much better when they are roasted whole. When you bite into them, they burst with flavor and juice, just like they do when you bite into a chocolate covered strawberry. You won’t get that same texture when you slice the strawberries. In fact, they will probably even break apart into smaller bits while roasting. 

And there you have it – the last ice cream recipe of National Ice Cream Month. I’m going to miss this month just as much as you. But who knows…maybe there will be more ice cream treats later in the year? Here’s to hoping!

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More treat you’ll love:

Chocolate Raspberry Mousse

Chocolate Berry Cups

Dark Chocolate Raspberry Fudge