Chocolate Fondue Recipe

Chocolate fondue can be a VERY fun activity that you can do together as a family. This recipe makes it REALLY easy and I will share some of my family’s favorite dippers to have with it as well. So, let’s get started so YOU can enjoy it too!

It can also be tricky — and it doesn’t have to be. Having a few simple tips can help.

I also have an easy CHEESE fondue recipe — and yes, we do both on the same night. It’s a bit of preparation, but worth it.

What Type of Chocolate?

We just use whatever is our current favorite. Honestly, most often people want milk chocolate, but if you want dark chocolate that works just fine too.

OR, we use whatever we have on hand, this recipe is NOT fussy.

Our favorite, if we’re good about planning, is to chop-up a Trader Joe’s bar for it. I think the chocolate is a good quality, and we’re at that store often enough it’s not hard.

We chop it pretty small — the smaller the bits are, the easier it melts.

I would caution against generic chocolate chips. While I think those are fine in cookies sometimes they just don’t melt well. Just something I have noticed.

How to Make It?

Ok, you’ll take 3/4 cup of heavy cream. I’ve used just whipping cream and it’s been fine, but it’s nice to have the extra fat if you can snag “heavy cream”.

You’re going to pour that into a small pot and let it heat for about a minute. I like to see some wisps of steam coming off of it before I turn off the heat (but leave it on the burner) and pour in 12 ounces of chocolate.

Unlike cheese I do this all at once, it works fine.

I then just stir it until it melts. You’re just using the heat of the cream to melt it. If it isn’t melted in a few minutes I might turn the heat back on, but I’m more worried about burning it than I am taking a bit more time for it to melt. This is why you do want to make sure that cream is hot before you add the chocolate.

Then, take it off the heat and add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract (or extract of choice). I also like to add a bit of almond extract, so do whatever makes you happy. Just do it at the end.

Then, stir it in well and dip!

Do you use a fondue pot?

We do not. This doesn’t make a ton of fondue, and we have a pretty heavy-bottomed pot that we’re cooking it in, so it stays warm for a while at our table.

We DO use a heated frying pan for our cheese fondue. Just haven’t found it’s worth it for chocolate. We just use the pot, on a pot holder at the table and everyone dips in.

What Types of Dippers?

Oh goodness, this is the best part — right?

Our favorites that are a bit un-traditional:

• Chocolate chip cookie dough (be sure to use a kind that is OK to eat raw — no eggs and toast the flour if you’re making it on your own) — that recipe I linked to is SO easy and yummy!
• Cheesecake bites
• Bits of candy bar
• Cut-up rice krispy treat

We also love strawberries, raspberries, oranges, green apples (or regular apple), grapes and bananas.

Honestly, the sky is the limit, right?

This recipe happened because we have a favorite fondue restaurant called La Fondue in Saratoga, CA and they have SO many fun dippers it helped us come up with these!

Recipe:

Here’s the recipe if you’d like to print it:

Because I’m not a recipe site — I just typed it out into a cute PDF file for you that you can just grab here (click on it and it will take you to Canva – just right click on it to print it).

Fondue Traditions

In our house fondue isn’t just a meal, it’s a tradition.

When our kids were little it was just too hard to go out on Valentines, and I really wanted to make it more about family love, rather than romantic love anyway.

So, we started doing fondue for Valentines.

My kids are old now, many have moved out but they still come back for fondue and they say it is 100% our family’s best tradition.

One of our favorite things to do is to say something nice about the person next to us if we drop in the fondue. Often on cheese we’ll do the person on the left, and chocolate the person on the right.

Makes it extra special on Valentines.

I hope you take this recipe and make it work for your family. It’s SO much fun and I think you’ll really enjoy it. If you’ve tried it, please tell us in the comments!