It’s no secret that the people who inhabit our neighborhood use any sort of excuse to host a get-together. As the snow continued to accumulate Thursday, Dahlia sent out an email asking if anyone else thought this was cheese fondue weather. Our thoughts may have been more along the lines of, good gosh let’s get out of this house and drink with other people, but hey, fondue worked.  A few emails (and phone calls) later, we appeared to have a plan.

Photo by Edie with her ipod touch. In order to secure the publishing rights, I had to agree to credit in ‘full size font near the photo’.

We trekked up to Dahlia & Aaron’s with a fondue pot, several bottles of wine, pound cake fresh from the oven and four loaves of baguette that still needed to go into the oven due to some poor oven management skills at the homestead.  As Kitchen Intern started chopping up the bag of veggies she had brought, Dahlia announced I was secretly in charge, I just didn’t know it yet. Having already learned that if you leave me alone in your kitchen at the tail end of a party, you will wake up to find almost no trace of the previous night’s debauchery, Dahlia took a wild guess that the next step in a friendship with me is a full kitchen takeover on my behalf. What she did not know is that while I will take charge, my preferred method of running the show means delegating to everyone else while I step back & take pictures for a blog post that may or may not result from the evening.Except for when I stop to pose of course.

She was fully prepared with a cheese fondue recipe at the ready. I sort of followed it – the wine & lemon juice suggested amounts, as well as the part about tossing the cheese with cornstarch. That was as far as it went.  I added cheese until it looked right. There was a lengthy conversation about how some of us have intuitive approaches to cooking and some of us don’t. Also, one can screw up cheese sauce.  I certainly have in the past.We paired the cheese fondue with the bread as well as an assortment of veggies.  The kids went first, gobbling up the first batch of cheddar in no time flat. The second cheddar pot I made was better than the first, but sadly, I cannot tell you what I did. I think there was a pinch of nutmeg involved as well as another splash of a rosé type wine, so that must have been the difference.  A batch of Jarlsberg fondue added some European cred to the entire endeavor.

The best part came last in the form of chocolate fondue for dessert.  By all accounts, it was slap your momma good. I had one bite and declared myself a culinary genius. I mean really.  It was all that and more with a cherry on top.  The thing is, short of going through Dahlia’s kitchen garbage can and counting the empty chocolate wrappers, I can’t be exactly sure how I made it, causing some unease among order muppets everywhere. She handed me a bunch of ingredients to use and I threw most of them in a pot until it looked right.  I did promise however to attempt to remember & write it down in this post. The key to making this is going to be tasting it.  If it doesn’t make you want to slap your momma, keep adding chocolate until you do.

If in fact, you don’t feel like slapping your momma, but prefer to become drooling chocolate monsters instead, that works too.

Slap Your Momma Chocolate Fondue

One can Eagle Brand milk (sweetened condensed milk)

6 ounces (or more!) semi-sweet chocolate

Pinch of salt

Milk to thin as needed.

Bring can of condensed milk to a simmer over medium heat.  Stirring constantly, add chocolate, one ounce at a time, until melted.  Add pinch of salt.  You’ll want the sauce to be smooth & not too thick.  Add milk as needed to thin. I highly recommend dipping something into it, tasting it as you go until you want to slap your momma. (Bananas, blood oranges and pound cake squares are my recommended vessels for dipping.)