Chocolate Sauce

Ever in the mood for ice cream and chocolate sauce? Me, too. Just the other day, in fact, I was overwhelmed with such a grand idea. But, although I will buy Haagen-Dazs ice cream, I haven’t found a chocolate sauce to buy (ok, Frans, but that’s half my monthly income, so out of the question). But, I have a very nice recipe for chocolate sauce and all the ingredients, so I set out to make it myself.

My recipe is for too large of a batch, for starts. Secondly, I want to use up the cream I bought for my birthday. And, I don’t really want to adjust every single measurement. What’s more, I only have dark chocolate enough for somewhere between 1/3 and ½ of the recipe. You got it, all I needed was one of those issues to make up my own version!

I began by caramelizing 1 and 1/5th cup of sugar. How I came by this fraction I probably couldn’t reproduce. Yet, I did it in my head more than once and besides, it felt right…. I whisked in a heaping tablespoon of cocoa powder, then slowly added my warm liquids (1C heavy cream, 1C water, large splash of vanilla extract). Whisking into a caramel can be intimidating, so I just take it easy. There’s no rush. I poured this boiling goo over my approximately 140g of 70% and 74% chocolate, which I’d broken into pieces and put in the VitaPrep. I added a 4-finger pinch of salt and blended until the hard chocolate was smooth and emulsified into the liquid caramel.

Then I had the most delicious bowl of ice cream with chocolate sauce. Ahh.