Fondue Weekend, From Scratch

As so many engaged couples do, we registered for one of these:

Of course, after one year of marriage, we still had never used it.  I blame it on the move overseas and the lack of storage pace, which keeps this baby hidden.  Well, no more excuses, fondue is here to stay!

We started of on Saturday night with a cheese fondue.  I found this recipe online from the vegetarian times website, and then we altered it a little.

The recipe called for a Mexican beer, but we thought USA all the way!

The first step was simmer about 2-2.5 cups beer with some mashed garlic.

While Ryan was working on this, I started shredding the pepper jack cheese.

Look at all that cheese.  I am thinking we could have been fine with half of this.

Then we added a mixture of water and flour to the beer and garlic.

In went the cheese and out went the picture taking.  In an effort to not burn the cheese, I had to work fast and could only stir in a handful of cheese at a time.  Therefore, not pictures of the cheese on the stove.

As this was a From Scratch Weekends meal, we had planned to make our own bread.  This was out intention, however on Saturday morning when we were at the local market, we stumbled upon some still warm and very nice looking bread.  We bought it, and decided making our own would just be too much.  We really couldn't resist this bread.  Could you?  At least this was super local from a bakery in the next village over and only contained a handful of ingredients.

This is the typical island bread and most restaurants serve this with the meal.

Ryan did a great job cutting everything up.

Here is the finished product.  Candles lit and we were ready to go.

This was so good and so easy to make.

Ryan set out this lovely spread of dippables.

The fondue pot in all its glory.

Ryan going for it with a grape.

Then I went for it with an apple.

When it is time to clean up, you just use the little cover to put out the flame from the sterno.

All done!

Well, all done with the cheese portion at least.

Monday Ryan was off from work, so we saved the chocolate fondue for then.

I am not so good with a knife, and Ryan is a superior knife handler, so I made him do all the cutting.  They always give pineapple here with fondue, so we HAD to have some with ours.

Nice little pyramids.

Then I got to work on the chocolate.  It was easy.  Condensed milk (1/4 cup) whisking continuously, then adding fat free evaporated milk.  Remove from heat and add chocolate chips or chocolate chunks.  We used the Hershey's and they tasted great.  Again, we did not 100% follow the recipe, we just threw everything in.  How can you go wrong with chocolate?!?!?

I forgot how thick condensed wilk was.

Here comes the chocolate.

Fondue Round 2...

The dippers...

These cookies came from the same bakery as the bread from the other meal.  We bought these at the grocery store.  The local major grocer is featuring products from the Azores right now, so we decided to try these dipped.  In the middle are the rest of my kosher for Passover marshmallows.  There were only 4 left, so we dipped those too.

The main event!

Yep, leftovers.  We dipped some cookies in chocolate so it didn't go to waste.

There you have it, fondue for 2 from scratch.

QUESTIONS:  Do you like fondue?  What is your favorite kind?  What is your favorite dipper?  Do you own a fondue set?  Ever made it at home?