You'd Think I'd Learn: Chocolate-Dipped Tomatoes and Other Disasters

Our monthly Sunday afternoon tea was today. Halfway through the dishes I decided I deserved a break and sat down to blog the evenings horrors for your delectation.

We borrowed a chocolate fountain and everyone brought goodies to dip. There were some wonderfully creative choices: Nature Valley Sweet n Salty Nut Bars, gummi worms, gingerbread, a sweet bread a guest from Senegal brought. And a not so wonderful choice: sun-dried tomatoes. In my defense, the tomatoes looked just like dried figs. I once put salt into a container and forgot to label. I later used that salt in a recipe in place of sugar. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson then. But no. Those tomatoes came out of an unmarked ziploc baggie.

That was just the prelude unfortunately. The big adventure of the evening involved our pièce de résistance: the chocolate fountain I borrowed from a friend. My chocolate was thick and I didn't want to add enough oil to thin it...No. Time to 'fess up. I thought I was smarter than the box and owner, both of whom told me to add oil. I thought cream would work better. And I found people online who claimed this worked. Armed with my own misplaced self-confidence and some online backup, I added cream. And then more cream. You couldn't seem to add enough. It was just too thick. Here I should have resorted to evaporated milk, for stability. But I was too busy in the kitchen to go to the pantry and get a can to open. Even better, I should have done as I was told and added the oil. But again, I was convinced I was smarter than the box and owner. So I grabbed a jug of milk. It worked great for a bit. Then it started to glop. It just kept getting worse. Finally, we added oil. It worked beautifully. The chocolate sheeted down the fountain just like in the pictures. For maybe two minutes. Then the milk clumped. The fountain gurgled and splat like there was a chocolatey swamp creature trying to rise from the muck. We resorted to melted chocolate in a pot and carried the fountain away in disgrace.