Yes I know I've written quite a few posts that involve chocolate (food of the Gods) sauce, but I thought I'd sorta consolidate them. Maybe give some tips, tricks, what goes well in it, etc.
The basic chocolate sauce has just three things: dark chocolate, butter, and cream. The less cream and butter, the thicker the sauce will be and if you only use a tiny amount of each then it'll harden upon cooling --great for things like chocolate coated strawberries. Or pretty much ANYTHING you want to chocolate coat (^_^)!
And the best thing is that you DO NOT NEED A DOUBLE BOILER! And it's quick too. You will need a thick-bottomed saucepan though so if you don't have one then go run out to the shops right now and get one.
I'll start with the basic sauce, and then talk about the various additions you can, ummm, add.
The basic chocolate sauce (this makes A LOT):
What you need:
One bar (375 grams or 12 ounces) of dark cooking chocolate
3 tbsp butter
1 cup cream
This'll make a sauce that is liquid at room temp, but thicker than motor oil. If you want a thicker sauce, just use less cream and less butter.
What you do:
Break the chocolate bar into pieces and put them all into your saucepan. Add the butter and the cream. Turn on the heat to low. Give it a stir to mix things well. Once the chocolate starts to melt, then take out a whisk and start whisking it. Almost continuously, in fact.
Once all the chocolate is melted and everything is thoroughly incorporated together, turn the heat off and continue whisking for another 30 seconds or so. Make sure you get to the bottom of the saucepan during the whisking so nothing burns.
Ta-da! Done! The whole process should have taken 2 or 3 minutes.
Now comes the FUN part! What you can add and when you should add it.
Substitute half the cream with a dark red wine like shiraz. Add at the same time as the cream, of course.
1 tsp of cinnamon powder and a half tsp cayenne powder. Add while whisking. Taste it afterwards and add more of either if you wish, no worries.
Cumin powder and cardamom powder go well too!
If you want it slightly tart, add some ground sumac.
Hard to go past ginger powder too.
My point is, the possibilities for flavorings are endless. I can tell you for a fact that the cinnamon and cayenne combo is wonderful! I'm still experimenting with the others to find the best combos that suit my palette.
So have some fun and experiment! Heck, make a batch of standard sauce and then divvy it up into bowls and mix different spices into each. Just make sure you write down which spices went into which bowl. And be sure to let me know what combinations of spices you find that are really good!
5 comments:
I love the variation ideas. Thanks for the suggestions. I'm a big fan of ginger with chocolate, and also cayenne. What do you do with the sauce if you give it that kind of heat? It sounds like a little much for an ice cream topping. ;)
Rachel: Hey you! Welcome back. Oh, I gotta check out your blog now that you are cooking again.
It actually wasn't as spicy as you think --as you know the cream takes a lot of the heat off whilst still getting the benefits of cayenne powder. I made this batch for the Flinder's U Bio Dept for their contribution to Australia's Biggest Morning Tea. It's an annual event to raise money for local cancer research and it's country wide. There were around 100 folks from the Bio bldg their so I did need to make a lot. There were absolutely zero leftovers from all my dishes and I had folks ask me for the choc sauce recipe --so it couldn't have been too hot, eh?
Trust me, the cinnamon and cayenne along with the cream n butter go very well together.
I made it for a dipping sauce to go along with crackers, bikkies, breads, and whatever.
And please excuse all my typos...
Love the new background!
Thanks Arvay! I'd like to take credit for it, but it's one of the backgrounds you can select with the new Blogger Template Designer. I was going to make a montage of some of my best food pics, but when I found this one I thought, "Why bother with all the work!"
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