Elevate Valentine's Day At Home With Slow Cooker Chocolate Fondue

If you're planning to stay in this Valentine's Day, it either means you're in a comfortable relationship or you're in for a solitary evening of watching television — in either case, there's no shame and nothing you need to answer for. Regardless, if you'll be near your kitchen the whole evening, you have an opportunity to make a sweet dessert with little effort on your part: chocolate fondue. Typically, if you don't have a fancy, specialized fondue pot, then common wisdom recommends using a saucepan to melt the chocolate down. If you have a slow cooker and enough time, though, you can easily make chocolate fondue at home with a Crock-Pot, which will keep it warm just as well.

The method is similar to using a slow cooker for cheese fondue. To prepare a classic Valentine's Day chocolate fondue instead, add the chocolate and other ingredients (cream, butter, etc.) to your Crock-Pot and watch them melt while you stir it every now and then to keep the texture consistent. You can't just leave it alone without stirring it, sadly, or the ingredients may not mix correctly, but it should only take about an hour before it's ready. Then, once done, you have a portable way to keep your sweet fondue warm, because it's already sitting inside the slow cooker. 

A slow cooker's primary advantage over a saucepan is that there's no need to transfer the fondue from the slow cooker to a bowl once it's done cooking. Set the slow cooker to warm, and feel free to dip all of the usual suspects for chocolate fondue directly into its pot. Your Crock-Pot will likely be slightly bulkier than a fondue pot, and you'll have to get a set of dipping utensils like the Sago Brothers' fondue forks separately, but there's no reason your slow-cooked chocolate fondue can't be a suitable centerpiece for a Valentine's Day spread.

If possible, you might want to set up your Valentine's Day fondue station near an outlet to keep the slow cooker plugged in. If that works out, you can arrange your trays of fresh fruits, marshmallows, cookies, and other treats around the appliance and keep it running while you dig into the fondue. If that's not possible, you can still carry the pot to wherever you'd like to enjoy your fondue and then plug it back in for a late dessert to keep it warm for the rest of the evening while you're watching a movie. Despite its hardly romantic reputation, you can still use that Crock-Pot like a professional to make chocolate fondue for a warm Valentine's Day night inside, so don't count this decadent dessert out.