Original Swiss Chocolate Fondue

Things are about to get fancy...

Though I have hundreds of fondue cookbooks, I have always loved this one for its extra groovy cover art, and the name: “The Fabulous Fondue Cookbook”!  Straight out of 1970, yo. The recipes here are by William I. Kaufman, and the very stimulating intro to each section (“But then we got to dessert. I dipped a fresh strawberry into the softly simmering chocolate fondue, and offered it to him. That did it! He proposed. Chocolate fondue is so sexy.” AND I QUOTE) were penned by Ms. Carmel B. Reingold. Nice work, you swinging cats!

Groovy, baby!

If you seek a proposal (or, in my case, just a tasty dessert), here is a fondue you can whip up in a flash that will melt anyone’s heart. (Melt, get it? Haw) The fact that Toblerone is a complex chocolate bar makes it seem like you spent way more time on it than you did, and fortunately chocolate fondue isn’t terribly messy. It also makes ANYTHING taste like heaven. Heck, it’s fabulous.

cheers to fondue!

Just a couple notes: Once you’ve made the fondue in the double boiler, you pour it into a ceramic bowl which is kept warm (and melted) over candle flame. This, however, is hard to regulate, so you may find it bubbling, in which case BLOW OUT THE CANDLE or your fondue will scorch. Then light it again in a few minutes. Yes, you have to work for it, but you’ll be glad you did. Also, dipping bananas into the chocolate tastes GREAT, but is really hard. You may lose one (or more) but the ones you get will be deeeeeelish. Other things to dip are: cubes of pound cake, mandarin orange segments, mini pancakes. And if (yeah right) you end up with fondue left over, serve it as sauce for waffles! Enjoy.

Original Swiss Chocolate Fondue

4 bars (3 oz each) Toblerone chocolate

1 1/3 cups heavy cream (to taste – pour in by the tablespoon)

2 Tbsp kirsch (I use Cointreau)

Whole fresh strawberries

Apple slices

·         Break chocolate into pieces. Over hot water, combine chocolate, cream and kirsch.

·         Stir until mixture is smooth.

·         Serve with strawberries and apples for dipping

I'm MELTING.......

Chocolate Pound Cake

Do you ever just REALLY. NEED. CHOCOLATE. CAKE? Come on, I know you do. Well that was me the other night, so I pulled out a card from my beloved 1973 “McCall’s Great American Recipe Card Collection” (oh you know, the one with the red white and blue logo with the huge American eagle? Yeah, that one. Hard to miss.) and made cake. Because I needed cake. Immediately.

The problem is, this cake isn’t ready immediately. First off, they don’t tell you till step 3 that the butter needs to be room temperature, which means you have to put the eggs and sour cream back in the fridge and watch an episode of “Murder, She Wrote” while you wait. Then get back to it. Second, for a small cake, it needs to bake for over an hour – people, you’ve just bought yourselves another episode! Hello, Angela Lansbury! But have no fear – the cake is good – but the batter? THE BATTER IS THE BEST PART. Make sure to enjoy some while you wait…

And after the 3 (or 200) hours it takes to prepare it, this is actually a nice cake, with decent chocolate flavor similar to my favorite cookies (DSers, see recipe here)  HOWEVER, since I am a very picky customer, I will point out that for a pound cake, it was a little too light and fluffy. Too light and fluffy you say, how is that even possible? How can you complain about that? Well, I prefer a light and fluffy angel food cake but a dense pound cake, call me nuts. Still, this has a nice flavor and is quick to make will give you something to do while you wait for your online stream to buffer ;)

going in...

just out of the oven

Ingredients:

1 cup boiling water

2 squares unsweetened chocolate, cut up (Note: 2 oz)

2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking soda

¼ tsp. salt

½ cup butter (NOTE: room temp)

1 ¾ cups light brown sugar, firmly packed

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla extract

½ cup sour cream

Method:

1.       In small bowl, pour boiling water over chocolate; let stand 20 minutes to cool.

2.       Meanwhile, preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease well and flour 9x5x3” loaf pan. Sift flour with soda and salt.

3.       In large bowl of electric mixer, let butter stand at room temperature until softened. At high speed, beat butter, brown sugar, eggs, and vanilla until light and fluffy.

4.       At low speed, beat in flour mixture (in fourths) alternately with sour cream (in thirds), beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat in cooled chocolate mixture just until combined. Pour into prepared pan.

5.       Bake 60 to 70 minutes, until cake tester comes out clean.

6.       Cool in pan on wire rack 15 minutes. Transfer from pan to rack; cool completely. Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar. Makes 1 loaf.