Chocolate Fondue without the Fondue Pot

One of the desires for our recent new years' eve party: Chocolate Fondue!

We picked up a fruit platter, and some bananas, in preparation for having things to smother in the chocolate. We wanted large marshmallows too, but couldn't get those in time.

We looked around for a fondue pot, though not so thoroughly, and by the day of the party, we just did not have one. At the time I thought, how hard can it be to conjure one up with stuff we have at home?

Turns out, it's not as simple as it sounds.

We had this tealight pot warmer that we thought could work. I wasn't sure if it would be hot enough, but we never got to try because we did not have a tea light available. Reminder to self: buy more tealights. According to google searches and e.g. this amazon item, this probably would have worked okay with a tealight. Anyone have experience with those?

But we did have a alcohol burner from a Coffee Siphon kit. This would be okay, but we did not have a good way to prop up the container holding the fondue materials in a stable manner. I fumbled a bit with this but gave up shortly.

Alright, fine. Worst case is that you cook it on the stove and have a chocolate dip, and periodically reheat. But maybe there was something else...

This site came to the rescue, and showed me a good way to get a fondue going. It's about how to set up a cheese fondue without a fondue pot and various ideas. Cheese, chocolate, same thing right? One fit our situation especially well: The Double Boiler.

They set up the double boiler on the stove, but we had something else we could use: A mini hot pot cooker.

Anything that you can put on the table that boils water will do, if you did not want it on a stove (for example, a portable inductive stove top). The idea is that you boil water and then place the container for fondue on top and let the steam of the boiling water heat up the container just the right amount so that it can melt the chocolate.

So we used a Pyrex glass bowl and placed the ingredients for the fondue in. I looked up rough proportions but I ended up just winging the quantities. Dark chocolate bar from Trader Joe's. Milk (ideally, here we used water and milk powder). Brown sugar. And let it melt.

I was worried a little about it not being able to handle the heat, but it was fine. I think you probably just have to worry not to expose the bowl to a sudden extreme change in temperature. I've had glass break that way before.

I spared you from the pictures that kind of don't look so appetizing in the New Years' post. But I don't feel like leaving them out here. Here you go! Know that it looked more appetizing than it seems in this photo.

Mmm... chocolate poop...

And the melted state again. In the background you can see the fruit platter.

Dipped chocolate-y goodness. We had some leftover chocolate, and the next morning we did it again for breakfast with bananas. Probably could put it on so many things. Like pancakes and waffles.

Maybe for next time we really will find one of those fondue pots. There are a few of them that even give you the fountain with melted chocolate flowing over the sides. That would be even better, more fun, and would look much better than our ugly fondue hack. But hey, it was fun to get this set up. I feel so resourceful.

What would you dip in your chocolate fondue?