Chocolate fondue recipe

Chocolate fondue is an easy crowd-pleaser for New Year's Eve.

Chocolate fondue is so easy to make it is almost ridiculous. And because it is so easy to make – essentially melting chocolate with heavy cream – you can experiment by adding different flavors such as shaving in some fresh ginger, chopped nuts, ground up candy cane, or maybe even a few grinds of pepper for an added kick (just not all at once).

Chocolate fondue pots are smaller than the heavy duty pots used for cheese and and oil fondues. This is probably a good thing to keep your guests from going ape over a giant vat of chocolate and regretting it later. A smaller pot keeps everyone acting civil and gracious. If you don't have a fancy chocolate fondue pot with steel skewers, you can make do with a pretty bowl and bamboo skewers.

Just make sure you have plenty of "dunking materials" (see list below) on hand to balance the richness of the chocolate.

Chocolate fondue

3/4 cup heavy cream
12 ounces high-quality bittersweet or semisweet chocolate (finely chopped)
1 teaspoon vanilla, peppermint, or orange extract

Heatcream to simmering in a medium saucepan; do not let it boil. Lower heatand add the chocolate, stirring constantly until the chocolate has melted. Add one of the flavored extracts (or ginger, candy cane, nuts, pepper) and whisk until the mixture issmooth.

Transfer to a fondue pot and keep warm with burner. Use one or all of the following for dunking:

Strawberries
Bananas
Peaches
Pineapple
Mango
Apples
Cherries
Angel food cake
Cheesecake
Cookies
Marshmallows

Kendra Nordin blogs at Kitchen Report.

To see her post on three kinds of fondue (cheese, oil, chocolate) click here.

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