Stoke the Fires of Romance with a Little Chocolate

National Romance Awareness Day will be August 14, six months after Valentine's Day. Even though it is hot and humid where I live right now, one of the best and most romantic chocolate experiences I have had is sharing fondue together. It can be expensive to go out to a shop that specializes in fondue and making it at home requires special equipment. But if you like fondue like we do and don't have a big fondue pot, the restaurants, or the money to go to them, then this Ceramic Chocolate Fondue Mug Set from PHILWILLS might be what you are looking for. I got this pair for free in exchange for writing a fair review of them based on my use through the Amazon Vine program. No other form of compensation was received and today's article is an unexpected bonus both the brand.

The set includes two mugs, two rather poorly poured tea candles, and two forks. The set I received didn't come with instructions so I'll try to provide some below as I share my experiences with using them.

Since these are ceramic you need to be careful. I placed mine on two trivets to protect our table be because the entire mug is going to transmit the heat. Light the candle before you put it into the lot under the bowl of the mug. Once the wick is fully burning, slip it into the slot. You can leave the fork where it is but I removed mine so that I could use it to stir the chocolate as it melted.

A candle (particularly a skimpy one like these) might now seem to give our much heat, but if you use a chocolate bar with darker chocolate, the higher amount of cocoa butter and chocolate liquor/mass will start to melt on the edges quickly; we used 70%. To get it melt faster, break up the chocolate into smaller pieces and keep stirring it.

Once it is all melted, blow out the candle because you could burn the chocolate. It will stay melted quite a while because the ceramic will hold the heat well and chocolate once melted stays melted at the same temperature as most healthy human bodies.

Then you can dip smaller items into as you would for a fondue pot. The benefits to each of you having your own pool of chocolate is that you can eat at your own pace without feeling like you are too slow or fast and if parts of your dippables fall into the chocolate, you are the one eating it. We tested this with cubes of pound cake and small peppermint marshmallows. You could easily use fruit in these, too. Another benefit of using the mugs is that if one person doesn't like as dark chocolate or a particule dippable item, they can use something else while still sharing in the experience with another person.

We enjoyed these fondue mugs so much and they are so cute that I'm storing in my fancy cabinets with the glass doors. This way I get a reminder that I have them so I don't have to wait for a romantic occasion to use them.