Chocolate Fondue

Recipe from Laura Bilodeau Overdeck

Adapted by Ligaya Mishan

Updated Jan. 31, 2024

Chocolate Fondue
Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Sue Li. Prop Stylist: Sophia Eleni Pappas
Total Time
10 minutes
Prep Time
5 minutes
Cook Time
5 minutes
Rating
4(115)
Comments
Read comments

Chocolate fondue is not a traditional dessert but a creation of the 1960s, first conjured up at Chalet Suisse, an alpine-themed restaurant in New York, by Konrad Egli, a Swiss chef and restaurateur far from home. This version is a simple equation of chocolate and heavy cream — essentially ganache, but in different proportions. Warm the cream, pour it over the chocolate and stir. A touch of salt brings the flavor into focus. You don’t need a fondue pot or even a double boiler: Just jury-rig a heatproof rack over a candle, or fill a pot or bowl with boiling water and tuck a smaller bowl inside it. (The key is not to melt the chocolate directly over flame, as this may result in scorching or a grainy, broken mixture.) Serve with whatever you think a little gilding with chocolate makes better: maybe bright crescents of clementines, candied yuzu peel, chewy stubs of mochi, butter-heavy pound cake or whole strawberries like fat little hearts. —Ligaya Mishan

Featured in: A Chocolate Fondue to Remember

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Ingredients

Yield:2 servings
  • 4ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
  • ¼cup heavy cream
  • Pinch of salt
  • Items for dipping, such as fresh fruit (whole strawberries, bananas cut on the diagonal or clementine wedges); candied orange or yuzu peel; pieces of mochi; shortbread cookies, biscotti or graham crackers; madeleines or hunks of pound cake
Ingredient Substitution Guide
Nutritional analysis per serving (2 servings)

391 calories; 28 grams fat; 17 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 8 grams monounsaturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 42 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams dietary fiber; 35 grams sugars; 4 grams protein; 88 milligrams sodium

Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.

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Preparation

  1. Step 1

    Set up a fondue pot, if you have one. If you don’t, set a heatproof rack — one that can securely hold a small heatproof bowl — over a candle or can of heating fuel (such as Sterno). Or, take a pot or bowl large enough to fit a small heatproof bowl inside it and fill with boiling water; the water should reach about halfway up the outside of the small bowl once it’s set inside the pot.

  2. Step 2

    Put the chocolate in your fondue pot or small heatproof bowl. Heat the cream in a small saucepan over medium until steaming and bubbling around the edges. Pour over the chocolate, add the salt and stir gently until smooth.

  3. Step 3

    Set the chocolate over the heat source and serve immediately, with items of your choice for dipping.

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Ratings

4 out of 5
115 user ratings
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Comments

Hillary

The Swiss Cookbook had a memorable chocolate fondue made from cream and Toblerone bars.

JP in CO

We always add a tablespoon of Grand Marnier, Kahlua, bourbon, or whatever happens to be in the liquor cabinet, except when we make it for the grandchildren.

SarahH

I wonder if the place Ligaya Mishan had the chocolate fondue was La Fondue in mid-town. It delighted me as a kid in the 80's and saved my sanity a few times in the 90's when my gen X life was so awful that only a bowl of cheese and/or chocolate shared with too many friends squeezed around a little table would do.

Anna Stambo

Used a bag of semi sweet, used 1/4 cup of Baileys and 1/2 cup of cream- fantastic!

Cathy in Idaho

This is just basically ganache.

Brenda

Double the recipe. Easy and delicious

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Credits

Adapted from Laura Bilodeau Overdeck

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