Basic Chocolate Sauce

Posted byJimi FiloPosted inRecipesTags:, , ,

Works well in coffee, on ice cream or for making chocolate milk. Thin enough to squirt out of a refrigerated squeezy (ex: FIFO) bottle.

INGREDIENTS

  • 135g Unsweetened Cocoa (rec: Ghirardelli Dutch Process Cocoa)
  • 550g White Cane Sugar
    • Or 410g of Honey (neutral, like clover)
  • 700ml Half & Half
    • Can sub water or whole milk for a thinner product
  • 2 tsp (20g) Vanilla Extract (or paste)
    • Or, 2.5gr vanilla powder (soaked in 7.5gr whiskey before adding to sauce)
  • 50g Milk Chocolate Chips (the cocoa-butter adds a nice after-taste)
  • 5-10g Whisky – entirely optional, but goddamn it’s good.
  • ½ tsp Nutmeg (fresh grated with a Microplane, not ground) – also optional and I would do either this, or the Whisky, not both.
  • Pinch of salt (about 1-2g)

DIRECTIONS

  1. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, combine cocoa, sugar milk and water.
  2. When volume increases (before boil) stir in the chips
  3. Bring to a low-boil and hold for 1 minute while stirring. 
  4. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla and any optional items.
  5. Allow to cool and put in food safe container, store in refrigerator.

Notes

  • Keep in mind, when you boil something like chocolate sauce, it nearly doubles in volume while boiling, choose your pot accordingly. Also boiling sugar is poor-man’s napalm, so don’t get complacent with this shit, the fuck-around and find-out cycle is short.
  • If you don’t have dutch-process cocoa, I would increase the salt. A big part of why Dutch is so good is that it is processed with an alkali (ex; baking soda, production salts), which takes a lot of plain cocoa’s acidic bitter ‘bite’ out.
  • Why bother doing any of this when you could just buy syrup? Quality. The quality of the ingredients can elevate this from a basic syrup, to something you’d expect from a high end bakery or chocolatier.
    • On a related note: if you can find, and are okay with the price of the pure ground vanilla, do it. The first time I opened a tin of it, all I could think was “holy shit, as a spice, this on the level of saffron” and I realized what passes for ‘vanilla’ as extract or even the bean you get from the spice section is an insult to this ingredient and what it’s capable of.
  • Refrigerate for about 1-2 weeks (it won’t last that long).
  • If you want an even thicker product, try subbing with heavy cream, but it will be thick.
  • Could you do some whacky shit like steep the liquid with lavender or saffron or rose? You could, and it would be pretty great, just keep in mind its intended uses. Flavored chocolates can go from amazing to too-much pretty quickly (in my opinion/observation of others).

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