Consider Having A Chocolate Fountain For Your Wedding

Setting Up A Chocolate Fountain

One of the new things appearing at weddings are chocolate fountains. Imagine having a cascading waterfall of chocolate near your wedding cake which is a chocolate lovers dream come true for many of your wedding guests. You start by heating chocolate into liquid form, you mix chocolate with oil, then pour the mixture into a chocolate fountain creating luscious, delicious tasting chocolate in which you can coat hundreds of delicious goodies, fruits, and treats with providing your wedding guests with a taste sensation they will long remember.

Make sure you choose a great location for your chocolate fountain, not too far away from your wedding cake. Make sure your chocolate fountain is situated onto a level surface and away from exterior doors and air conditioning ducts. You want your chocolate fountain to be situated away from ice bars and any time of refrigeration, which could prematurely cool the chocolate and harden it. Keep the chocolate fountain away from busy areas especially from dance floors, so that a wayward dancer might bump into it and cause it to topple.

You should never set up a chocolate fountain in an outdoor environment. Gusts of wind may spread the chocolate and should it rain on your event, chocolate and water just don't nix very well, and should the two shall mix, there may be a tendency for the chocolate to seize inside the fountain. Bugs are especially attracted to the sweet smell of chocolate. Bugs can smell the chocolate from far away and will follow the smell and jump right in.

Chocolate fountains have become so popular at weddings in recent years, many chocolate fountain companies have sprung up and are flourishing. Chocolate fountain businesses can now be found in every major city and many can even be found in many mid-sized towns. Many caterers have added them as part of their business. These days bakeries, sweet shoppes, kitchen supply stores, rental service companies provide them and you can find them in many of the major department stores.

The secret of having a good chocolate fountain is finding the right brand of chocolate that has a high content of cocoa butter in the chocolate mix. The cocoa butter used for a chocolate fountain should be between 32% to 39% viscosity. Some chocolate, can be combined with vegetable oil can be used to turn the chocolate mixture into a viscosity level that will work well inside a chocolate fountain.

When you lease a chocolate fountain, once the machine arrives, be sure to do a test run early on and get some practice working the machine and get comfortable with its operation and to be sure the machine is working properly. Should any problems pop up in its operation, you have time to contact the leasing company to get the fountain fixed or plenty of time to get a replacement fountain before the wedding. Chocolate fountains are generally provided almost a week before your event enabling a user to get comfortable with its use.

There are a number of ways to ready your chocolate before pouring it into the chocolate fountain. You can start the process off by using a double boiler to melt the chocolate. You can also use a slow cooker, a crock pot, or a microwave oven to melt the chocolate. You want to heat the chocolate to approximately 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Make sure when melting the chocolate to stir the mixture often until melted, the keep in melting the chocolate is to melt the chocolate slowly so no chocolate gets burn't. Should any chocolate get burn't, the burn't taste will spread throughout the chocolate vessel and throughout the chocolate fountain.

Should you not be using an already made chocolate oil based solution, the rule is for every five pounds of chocolate, you should mix the chocolate with a 1/2 pound of cooking oil such as vegetable oil. Stir the two ingredients together immediately after the chocolate has melted. The chocolate mixture needs to be thin enough to cycle through the chocolate fountain without clumping. You cannot add oil to the chocolate once it's poured into the fountain. Make sure you test the chocolate mixture consistency before pouring the mixture inside the fountain. You want the chocolate to continue to be poured into the fountain so that the flow is full circle inside the machine and there are no gaps in the chocolate and the chocolate has an even 360 degree flow.

While milk chocolate by far remains the most popular flavor used in chocolate fountains, more and more flavors are starting to appear in fountains. Many fountains are made with dark chocolate, white chocolate, mint chocolate, caramel, eggnog, vanilla, strawberry, and cherry. Some companies have come out with all sorts of flavors and colors that can be used for the chocolate fountain. A popular product used for different flavors for chocolate foutains is called freeze flavor fountain.

Freeze flavor fountain products are often used to make ice cream or frozen yogurt. But this product can be mixed with white chocolate or vanilla morsels allowing you to create almost any color and flavor fountain mixture for your wedding, you can create a fountain to the color scheme of your wedding. You can even match a few colors or dyes together to get almost the exact shade that you want for your fountain. You do have to be careful on the dyes that you use for your fountain, they need to be oil based dyes. Normal dyes such as ones used to make Easter Egg coloring won't due because they aren't oil based.

Your chocolate fountain does not have to be chocolate any more. You can create one of your favorite flavor. Your chocolate fountain can be blueberry, grape, orange, lemon, pina colada, Midori, peanut butter, chocolate fudge, watermelon, strawberry daiquiri, or almost any flavor available to make ice cream or Italian ices.

There are hundreds of goodies that you can use to dunk into your chocolate fountain. One idea is to build a fruit laden palm tree next to your chocolate fountain or core some pineapples and dowel them together and top the highest pineapple with some palm leaves. You could use toothpicks or skewers holding various fruits, candied fruits, or marshmallows and hang on the bark. You can decorate the trunk area of your palm tree with various platters of fruits.

You can also decorate the area around the chocolate fountain, you can use all sorts of bowls with varying shapes, heights, and textures. Use lower dishes near the front of the table and higher dishes in back. There are dozens of different dishes you can use to hold your dunking goodies in. You can use candy bowls, glass vases, ash tray dishes, long stemmed martini glasses, fish bowls, tiered plates, canister sets, acrylic dishes, clay pots, hors d'ouevre serving dishes, use dishes of imagination and make the area look pretty.

There are hundreds of goodies you can use for dunking into your chocolate fountain. A list of some of the goodies include strawberries, cherries, chunks of pineapple, bananas, apple slices, candied apples, coconut chunks, guava, pears, kiwi, mango, watermelon chunks, honeydew melon, and many other fruits.

You can dunk many other goodies into your chocolate fountain. You can dunk certain types of cookies. You can dunk Oreos, sugar cookies, snicker doodles, peanut butter cookies, and chocolate cookies. You should not use cookies that contain nuts or cookies that are crumbly though, these types of cookies can break off and fall into the chocolate mixture and jam up the machine. You can also use frozen candy bars to dunk.

Other goodies you can dunk include marshmallows, marshmallow treats, soft pretzels, rum balls, cubed cheeses, sponge cake, dessert cake and certain types of ice cream cones. For some desserts you can leave a ladle near your chocolate fountain and fill the ladle with chocolate and pour the chocolate onto wedding cake, ice cream, cream puffs, chocolate eclairs, spumoni, cheesecake, fudge brownies, blondies, as well as ice cream sundaes and banana splits. Ladle the chocolate onto almost any type of dessert.

Chocolate fountain machines can also be used with fondue type mixtures. Fountains can be used for barbecued sauces, cheese sauces, and certain types of creamy dressings such as french, ranch, thousand island, or Russian and you can dunk chicken strips, beef sticks, or pastry type hors d'oeuvres into the cascading sauce for a delicious treat. Make sure the sauce has the right viscosity for the fountain. Be careful using this type of fountain for a formal event, you want to avoid creating messy sauces that might spill on expensive dresses and tuxedos.

Chocolate fountains can typically rent anywhere from $100 to $400 for the larger ones. It may be worthwhile to buy a good one instead. The price to buy a chocolate fountain is not too much different from renting one and you will have many more years to come for guest entertaining. If it does not fit your budget, maybe you can convince a relative or friend to pick it up for a good cause (your wedding) then you borrow it and they have use for it for many years to come.

With a chocolate fountain, you should assign a host or hostess to watch over it or have the caterer's help be assigned to watching over it. You want to have someone around to be sure the fountain is being used properly and especially help young children get the cascading chocolate onto their goody. The attendant should be assigned to clean up drippy spills, they should wear an apron to protect them from accidental chocolate spills.

Make sure there are plenty of paper towels on hand. For cleaning up you should use paper towels, sponges, squeegees, and scooper spoons. Make sure you have enough storage containers for chocolate and goody leftovers. Identify chocolate lovers who would love to take leftovers home with them after the event.

Use large plastic bags to transport the pieces of chocolate fountain to cart removable parts to a sink to clean. Should chocolate harden inside of the fountain, simply turn on the heating element to melt the chocolate, then to wipe with a paper towel or moist sponge. Be careful not to soak the heating component in a tub of water.

Some couples can set up their chocolate fountain into like a movie concession stand area. They could set up a candy buffet bar area next to their chocolate fountain. One idea is to set up a Kettle Popcorn Machine on one end and set up a Cotton Candy Machine on the other end. These machines are very nostalgic and a delicious treat.

You might think of having a chocolate fountain concession area in front of a movie theater setup with a fifteen minutes showing of a video of the wedding couple or a slide show of the couple. Use your imagination to come up with a chocolate fountain your guests will long remember!