Chocolate Syrup

Being pregnant, I want ice cream ALL THE TIME.  I’ve been pretty good about not keeping any in the house; instead, I’ve been drinking blended chocolate milk- fill a cup with ice, then fill it with milk, and toss it in the blender with chocolate syrup to taste.  It’s not ice cream, but it is delicious.  It also means I’ve been burning though our Hershey’s bottle that used to sit in the fridge for months untouched.  Now that the bottle is almost out, I thought I’d try my hand at making it.  I found an oh-so-easy recipe on Allrecipes.  Added bonus- I FINALLY finished my container of Hershey’s Cocoa.  It had apparently expired in (cough) 2008, but it tasted fine to me.

You will need

1 ½ cups water (free)

1 ½ cups sugar ($3.29 per 5 lb, $3.29/ 80oz = $.04 x 11.25oz = $.45)

1 cup cocoa powder ($3.00 for 8 oz, $3.00 x 2.8125 cups = $1.07)

¼ tsp salt ($.47 per 26 oz, $.47/ 30.69 tsp = $.02 x .25tsp = about $.01)

1 tsp homemade vanilla ($.01 per ml, $.01 x 4.92 ml = $.05)

I bet you have all these things in your cabinet.

 Throw everything except the vanilla in a small saucepan over low to medium-low heat, and whisk constantly till it simmers.  Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.  Put it in a container and store in the fridge overnight. 

The original recipe says that the cook time is 5 minutes, and that it’ll start to thicken and simmer.  My cook time was more like 15 minutes because I kept creeping the heat up to get it to simmer.  It probably thickened a little, but all the comments said it will thicken in the fridge.  

At first it has a gritty sludge on top

After a while it gets these pretty swirls

And FINALLY it starts to simmer.

After enjoying my almost-nightly blended goodness, I tasted both my syrup and Hershey’s straight up.  They were pretty similar.  The homemade was slightly less sweet and more intensely cocoa-y, which I liked.  The blended chocolate tasted exactly the same, but I also go a little lighter than most in that.

One of my two jars of syrup with my delicious frozen goodness.  Mmmm.

Try It

$1.58 for about a pint, or $.09/oz.

Buy It

$2.65 for 24 oz, or $.11/oz.

Verdict

Try It.  Even with the extra time it took on the stove, it was an easy project with only 5 ingredients that you probably already have.  If you’re not into spooning out your syrup, just retain your Hershey’s squeeze bottle after it’s empty and refill it.  

NEXT WEEK: Peanut Butter!