The rapidly falling temps make me just want to stay inside and have cozy nights with the kids. The other night we pulled out our new Velata fondue pot (that Little and I demoed at last month’s chocolate fair) and had a great night dipping and dunking fruit and snacks in melted chocolate. I don’t know too many kids that don’t love fondue, but in the past I’ve always been worried that someone was going to lose an appendage if we tried to do it ourselves at home over a flame. The beauty of this little pot is that it uses a lightbulb to keep the chocolate or the cheese melted. I mean how genius. It’s literally idiot proof. And unlike the more traditional fondue pots that I’ve had, it’s small and compact and fits easily into a kitchen cabinet.
Velata sells their own pouches of Belgium chocolate, and it comes in a bunch of flavors including milk chocolate, caramel milk, dark and white chocolate. While I highly recommend their chocolate, Big gave the pot a second go round the next day with friends using standard supermarket bought chocolate chips and that worked just great. But using their chocolate, you just plug in your pot, pop the chocolate pouch in the microwave for a minute, knead it until any last lumps are gone and pour it into the pot. I put out some strawberries, cut up bananas, pretzels and marshmallows and we used the 4 included fondue forks and dunked away. No double boilers, lighters or open flames, just lots of laughter and yummy melted chocolate.
This week we have a lot of evening activities, so I think we’re going to try the cheese fondue as our dinner (velata also sells their own brand of cheese mixes but there are a ton of super easy cheese fondue recipes online). I’m going to boil some tortellini, steam some broccoli and cut up some bread and voila!! A home cooked meal!
This would make for a great holiday gift for the kids or as a hostess gift if you’re staying with friends and family over the holidays. The pot comes in a variety of cute colors. I linked to it on amazon but if you check the Velata website there are other sellers.