Best Chocolate Fondue at Home or at Your Party

How great is it when you’re out at a party or wedding and it’s time for the dessert table? My personal favourite is when you get there and you see a great plate of fresh fruit and tower of flowing chocolate. Chocolate fondue, what a great combination.  And with the right ingredients it’s actually a great way to get some powerful foods into your system with amazing flavour and taste. Today we will help layout the best way to recreate a great chocolate fondue experience at home for any special occasion or even just a Tuesday night. It’s fun, it encourages trying new fruits and who needs a reason to try new chocolate?

What tools do you need to get ready?

In our family, we get everything ready in advance because once the chocolate and fruit get out on the table they have a tendency to go missing before the fondue is even ready. Preparation will ensure the experience comes together quickly when it’s time.  So let’s help lay it out. First you need some staple kitchen tools to get your ingredients prepped and ready:

• Dry-measure cups
• Liquid-measure cup
• Small knife to cut fruit
• Heatproof bowl
• Small saucepan
• Whisk
• Measuring spoons

What tools do you need to get serving?

Your serving setup is really dependent on what you have available or what you are willing to invest in. If fondue (cheese or chocolate) is something you love and are willing to invest in, than there are lots of options available at your local home supply store or online. There are two main options – electric heat or flame heat. For flame heat, candles don’t quite generate the heat you need, so a gel fuel source will be the best option to use.

The key to serving great fondue is ensuring there is balanced heat being applied to the chocolate to ensure it stays creamy, silky and warm so the last bite is as good as the first bite. By not using heat, the chocolate will start to solidify and the experience will be pretty dull after the first few bites.

Our family uses a slow cooker, just because that’s what we have and we love how easy it is to clean afterwards. Our family tools:

• Mini slow cooker or fondue pot
• Fondue forks or long wooden skewers

Getting your fruit ready

There really are no instructions here other than come to Vince’s and pick out some great fruit like:

• Bananas
• Strawberries
• Pineapple
• Apple
• Kiwi
• Grapes
• Peaches
• Really whatever you like or whatever is in season!

We have found that introducing new fruits to the kids is a lot easier when they have some chocolate on the end. Here’s your chance to get them to try something new! Now of course if you want to add some marshmallows or cubes of pound cake to the mix, don’t let us stop you.

In advance of your chocolate fondue, we recommend washing, pairing and prepping all of the items so they are ready to go when you are.  The only items that I personally would save to cut until the end are the items that brown when prepped – bananas particularly don’t hold up well once sliced and certain varieties of apples. These can be last minute additions while your chocolate starts warming.

Vince`s Tip: Ensure all of the fruit is fully dried after washing as any water left on the fruit will lead to the chocolate slipping off… and we can’t have that!

Getting started with the chocolate

Who doesn’t love chocolate? Finding the right chocolate for your fondue can be an exercise in trial and error.  That being said, we recommend using semisweet chocolate to start and staying away from milk chocolate which can be too sweet.  Here are the simple steps:

Step 1: Put chocolate chips into medium heatproof bowl.

Step 2: Pour cream into small saucepan; heat over medium-high heat until hot and steaming but not boiling. Remove from heat.

Step 3: Carefully pour hot cream over chocolate chips; let stand for 2 minutes.

Step 4: Add vanilla; whisk until smooth.

Step 5: Scrape into mini slow cooker or fondue pot. Keep warm on low setting.

Step 6: Grab a fondue fork or skewer and get dipping!

Remember to set out the rules for dipping! Are you all okay with double dipping or are you a no-double-dipping event? You can even have fun with this with little table cards spelling out the rules.

How do you and your family enjoy a chocolate or cheese fondue?  Do you have any tips or tricks to make it the best fondue experience yet?

As always, we welcome your questions and feedback. You can leave a comment right here on the site or head on over and join in the conversation on Facebook (remember to ‘Like’ the page) and Twitter – (don’t forget to follow us there too).  If you haven’t already signed up to receive our weekly news delivered right to your inbox (including the blog, our weekly product feature, signup for our Coterie Program, and our recipe of the week), you will find the signup by clicking here.

Until next time,

Giancarlo