Chocolate Fondue

Often close-up, high definition photos of the food I cook are what preview my Clearly Delicious recipes.  However, my friends’ responses to a recent chocolate fondue dessert were just too good to keep from making virile.  The setting: Sunday Night at John’s place.  The reason: Mike was cooking his Clearly Delicious Summer Salad w/Shrimp, Strawberries, and Blue Cheese.  The other reason?: New episode of True Blood! Yes, when you are friends with a well-published, brilliant, interesting vampire specialist, any occasion is a good one for keeping up with popular vampire fiction and eating yummy melted chocolate with strawberries (it’s just so…right…ya know?).

So Chocolate Fondue: really, Chocolate Fondue requires no introduction.  It speaks for itself with its good  reputation and massive popularity.  But I will say a couple of points that I love about chocolate fondue: not only is it a cheap, easy way to make an elegant dessert, but it is also a great way to be interactive with your food and your friends.  There are countless sets of “Fondue Party Rules” on the internet explaining that if someone drops their bread in the cheese, they must kiss the person next to them.  If someone “crosses swords” with their dipping sticks, they have to plan the next party (and yes, I did just say “crosses swords” in a food blog post).  Regardless, the rules to fondue eating are as much fun as the dish itself.  See here for some introductory rules to this clearly delicious easy and fun dessert.

Chocolate Fondue

Although you don’t necessarily need a fondue pot to make this dish, I heavily suggest it as it makes the prep/cleaning/eating process that much easier.  This recipe is a basic spin on chocolate fondue (melt chocolate with cream please! Not water, or milk!).  But uses specialty pomegranate dark chocolate from World Market to give the dish a certain extra something.  For other recipe ideas, please see Elise Bauer’s version of Chocolate Fondue here or Garrett McCord’s interesting essay on “Dining Out on V-Day” (spoiler: it doesn’t have to be about fondue, although fondue is nice).

Ingredients:

* 12 ounces dark, high quality chocolate (see Pomegranate Chocolate from World Market)
* 8 ounces heavy cream
* Dipping ingredients: an assortment of fruit such as strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, or even apples.  An assortments of sugary baked goods such as cheesecake, brownies, or even animal crackers!

Devices Needed:

* 1 Fondue Pot

1.) Begin by prepping your dipping ingredients: wash all of the fruit; de-stem strawberries and halve or leave whole (this step is really based on personal preference).  Arrange on a serving dish.  Add other dipping ingredients such as animal crackers, brownies, and cheesecake.  Make sure to cut the cheesecake and brownies into smaller bite-size pieces.

2.) Roughly chop the dark chocolate.

3.) Add heavy cream to the fondue pot and turn it to medium, or medium-high.  When the cream starts to steam and bubble a little bit, slowly mix in the melted chocolate until all chocolate is integrated and smooth.

4.) Turn heat to “warm” and serve chocolate with dippings.  Enjoy! Makes 4-5.

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