Chocolate fondue is easy prepare, so why don’t we have it more often? You don’t need a special fondue pot: You can use a standard sauce pot and a portable burner to keep the chocolate warm. However, long-handled fondue forks are needed.

A fondue sidebar: Back in the day, we were big fondue fans, hosting frequent fondue parties. We owned the specialty pots dictated by convention for each type of fondue:

We’re trading in our sterno-heated brazier
for this electric fondue pot from Rival.

 
The cheese and chocolate, and the oil for the beef, were heated on the stove. They were brought to the table and placed atop a brazier, a portable metal frame with an underneath heating source: alcohol, Sterno or butane (or the original, less effective heating source, a tea candle).

Today’s portable electric burners and electric fondue pots are a better solution, but for the electric cord and an extension cord trailing over the dining table.

We’re actually moving our fondue party into the 20th century, donating our three fondue pots to a good cause and purchasing one electric pot.

Back to the chocolate fondue:

Chef Trey Foshee of George’s at the Cove in La Jolla, California, goes a step beyond the traditional chocolate fondue recipe and adds creamy mascarpone cheese (a key ingredient of tiramisu).

Thanks to Chef Foshee and the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board for the delicious recipe.