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

  • 1 ⅓ C / 135g Unsweetened Cocoa (rec: Ghirardelli Dutch Process Cocoa)
  • 2 ⅓ C / 550g White Cane Sugar, or Honey (neutral, like clover)
  • 2 C / 450ml Whole Milk
  • ½ C / 100ml Water (or sub half-n-half for a richer 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.
  • Heavy Pinch of salt (about 5g)

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 nearly double 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 a thicker product, try subbing the water ratio for heavy cream, or do the whole liquid part with half-n-half.
  • Could you do some whacky shit like steep that 1/4c of water 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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