Welcome to Mommy Mondays, the one day a week I've set aside to talk about my kid. Or just kids in general. Or parenting. On Mondays, I'm a pure mommy blogger.
Over the holidays, my mom pulled out a chocolate fountain
If you're all right with your kids having chocolate. And my family is okay with it. In abundance.
I couldn't find the exact kind we were using, but this one
Along with the skewers, mom set out fruit and pretzels.
And marshmallows, of course.
And crushed peppermint. In case you want to dip your chocolate-y marshmallow in for some crunch. That woman thinks of everything.
I'm not going to lie, it was sort of a rough start. Nothing came out at first. Silence. Antsy children.
Ahhhh, there's something. But it's a little too thick. WAY too thick. My mom was stirring at the bottom, while my brother was stirring at the top.
We waited while my mom scooped some out of the basin and thinned it. Take two, chocolate flowed a lot more freely.
Fun!
The dipping was great.
The eating was better.
*
Tips from my mom:
I didn't do it right because I tried to start it with solid chocolate. You need to heat the chocolate before pouring it into the fountain. The fountain has a heating unit, but it's just to keep it warm. I think we would have had better luck if the chocolate had been thinned just a little. But you can't thin melting chocolate with water. So you have to read on the package how to thin it if necessary and not thin it too much. I think the fruit should have been cold or cool, not room temp, but for sure dry.
Tips from my sister:
First, it's important that you utilize all the adult "chiefs" available and no followers. That way everyone, not just the children, are thoroughly entertained/aggravated. Then I think you have to make sure the chocolate is hot enough to be pumped through the system. I think that was our primary issue in getting it going.
Finally, we probably spent too much time/money on making sure we had good and diverse items to dip: bananas, strawberries, pineapple. All of these are great, but the kids would have been just as excited to dip a hunk of cheese or just a cookie as long as they could stick something in the fountain and lick the chocolate off.
Truer words have never been spoken.
