Valentine’s Day is coming! Valentine’s Day is coming! For some, it’s an anticipated event. For others, it’s a nuisance. Now, my husband thinks that it is a Hallmark created holiday that forces people to start spending money again after recovering from weeks of Christmas credit card gluttony.
His thought is “why should I spend lots of money to show you I love you for one day? Wouldn’t you want me to be kind and considerate every day?” Well, of course, I can’t win this argument. I would like to have him be kind to me most days of the year, rather than just one. But, as the years of our relationship go on, ‘kind and considerate days’ are taken for granted amongst the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives and it takes a holiday like Valentine’s Day to jolt us back into thinking of things cheesy and romantic.
But when I say cheesy and romantic, I don’t mean the flowers or the giant Hallmark cards that play tinkling versions of Air Supply or Barry White when you open them. I literally mean ‘cheesy’ and romantic, as in iconic, 70’s inspired ‘fondue’. I don’t know why we associate melted cheese, boiling broth and melted chocolate as gastronomical displays of love. It might be a sign of our generation and the popularity of restaurants like The Melting Pot that became symbols of romantic dining in the 90’s. To prove how popular melting cheese and hunks of pound cake dipped in chocolate still are, try to get a reservation at any restaurant like this for Valentine’s Day weekend and you will find that unless you planned ahead the week of Christmas to get a reservation (I envy you folks), you are out of luck or will be eating dinner at 10 p.m. So, for us not so reservation-fortunate, I offer obscenely easy, inexpensive, make-at-home versions of fondue dessert recipes that could be made with a fondue pot, a microwave safe dish or in mini crock pots like the Trio Slow Cooker featured in last month’s sweepstakes.
As, I, like many of you have very little time for cooking, I tried to find the easiest and fastest way to make a dessert fondue. My search lead me to create a fondue that is based on the hot fudge I create when I want something drizzled on vanilla ice cream. My basic concept was to have really good chocolate, fresh cream and be able to add any liqueur I had on hand in my pantry. Easy: check. Fast: check. Delicious: check, check.
The first recipe I tried was
Chocolate Butterscotch Fondue . I have become a fan of dark chocolate as I have gotten older and I thought this would be a good alternative to the milk chocolate that is often used in fondue. This recipe took me about 10 minutes to make (if I had opted to use the microwave, I would have cut that time in half.) I gave my Dad a sample taste of the fondue, and he didn’t care for it as much. It was a little too bittersweet and for that reason, you really couldn’t taste the butterscotch. I enjoyed the dark chocolate flavor, but I think I would recommend combining 50% bittersweet chips and 50% milk chocolate. I think that would provide a better balance of flavors.
The second recipe, using the same techniques, is a
White Chocolate and Cardamom Fondue. This recipe also only took about 10 minutes to make and WOW! This was fantastic. The addition of cardamom and that pinch of nutmeg really helped give the fondue a lot of flavor. It brought out the flavors of the strawberries and the bananas, not to mention the pound cake. The basic concept of this fondue made me think it would be a great base for an ice cream flavor, but I digress.
The final recipe’s goal, although not fondue, was to make it seem like I actually put some effort into making a dessert for my hubby. I made my Dad’s classic
Pound Cake recipe. This pound cake has the perfect texture and density for dipping. It does not break apart in the chocolate and, with the neutral vanilla extract, complimented both fondue recipes.
These featured fondue recipes are for those of us that risk 1st degree tongue burns and use our fondue forks to scrape the bottom of the pot to get that last bit, lest it be wasted; those of us who bypass dinner to consume in, Flash Gordon speed, all of the good pound cake, strawberries and marshmallows leaving only the lowly pineapple chunks to our loved ones. And most importantly, those of us who would rather have more time with our loved ones, than time in the kitchen.
Happy V-Day.
dGizmo