If you’re running out of party ideas for the holiday season, fear not. Fondue is here to help.

This delightful Swiss dish can be the center of an entire party, save you lots of work and leave guests in awe.

The most expensive parts are the pot and the cheese. Hopefully you already have a fondue pot, or you have friends who do so you can borrow theirs. It’s best to use a metal pot for cheese and a ceramic pot for chocolate, but nobody will tattle if you use the same pot for both dishes and wash it in between uses.

You can buy packets of ready-to-heat fondue cheese at the grocery store, but they’re pricey. Look up slightly-more-involved fondue recipes online to save a few bucks. The ingredients are usually pretty basic: cheese and milk. Sometimes you can even add spices and beer. For the dipping, buy whatever you like. Bread, broccoli, carrots, apples, meat, croutons – you name it. If it’s savory or goes well with cheese, your guests can fondue it.

Making a dessert fondue involves more

planning but it’s worth the effort. There are a variety of recipes online, and you can use any chocolate from milk to dark. They generally all call for a large amount of chocolate chips and heavy whipping cream, and you can add such ingrediants as alcohol or nuts. You can go buck wild getting things to dip in the dessert fondue – anything goes from muffins, cheesecake and brownies to marshmallows, bananas and strawberries.

The preparation for these dishes can be time-consuming, but that’s what you have guests for,to help you cut and dice and stir! Then you can all sit around and coat your skewered dippers in cheese and chocolate, drink and be merry. It’s easy!