Chocolate Sauce
Homemade chocolate sauce is a quick and easy silky smooth, creamy topping that is perfect with ice cream, pancakes, great for dipping and so many other cakes or desserts.
This delicious sauce can be served either hot or cold, and it’s easy to swap out some of the ingredients to make it vegan too.
This chocolate sauce goes perfectly with so many desserts, like praline pear meringue cake, raspberry lime panna cotta or raspberry vanilla custard profiteroles.
If you decide to give this recipe a try, let me know! Leave a comment below and rate it – it’s really helpful to me and the other readers. And don’t forget to take a picture and tag it #thegourmetlarder on Instagram. I love seeing what you come up with! 🙂
RECIPE HIGHLIGHTS
- EASE: Easy.
- GREAT FOR: Accompanying any cake or dessert.
- TASTE: Sweet chocolaty and smooth.
- TEXTURE: Smooth and silky.
- QUANTITY: 350ml
- TIME: 35 minutes.
INGREDIENTS
For this chocolate sauce recipe all you need are these 6 ingredients:
- Double or heavy cream– creates creaminess and consistency.
- Caster or granulated white sugar – adds sweetness.
- Vanilla extract or paste – to enhance the flavour.
– Vanilla recommendations: pure vanilla extract or vanilla paste or vanilla pods.
- Dark or milk chocolate – choose your favourite chocolate for that beautiful rich flavour.
Chocolate recommendations: bars – Lindt Excellence dark 70% bar 100g, Montezuma’s darkside 51% bar 90g, Menier dark cooking chocolate 100g, Green and Black’s Organic dark Chocolate 100g, 1kg bags – Callebaut dark chocolate, Callebaut milk chocolate, Callebaut white chocolate.
- Butter – adds structure and flavour. I use salted butter for most of my baking as it intensifies the flavours, but feel free to use unsalted if you prefer.
- Cocoa powder – adds a beautiful rich chocolate flavour.
Cocoa recommendations: Dr. Oetker fine dark cocoa powder or not as dark – Sevenhills wholefoods organic cacao powder
TIP: I highly recommend adding a good pinch of salt to your sweet sauces. It would seem counterproductive, but it’s not, I promise. Salt helps balance out the sweetness and richness. It also elevates the other ingredients, bringing out the best characteristics of any sauce recipe. In a seemingly absurd or contradictory way, salt intensifies the mouth’s ability to taste sweetness. Sodium sends signals to move glucose into the sweet taste receptor cells in our tongue, triggering the cells to register sweetness. The result is that salt not only alerts our ‘salt sensitivity’, but also our ‘sweet sensitive’ taste buds.
I recommend Maldon Sea salt flakes or Cornish sea salt.
WHAT VARIATIONS CAN I MAKE?
This recipe is quite versatile:
- Coffee – add 1 tsp of instant coffee to the chocolate ingredients.
- Alternative flavours – try chocolate bars that are flavoured with orange, mint or chilli.
- Alcohol – add a little brandy, rum, Baileys, Kahlúa, Malibu or your favourite tipple for that extra kick.
- Sweeteners – can be used instead of sugar or try honey or maple syrup.
If you experiment, I would love to know how you get on and share it with the other readers.
NUTRITION
Serving: one chocolate sauce serving (2.5 tbsp)
Nutrition information can vary for a recipe based on factors such as precision of measurements, brands, ingredient freshness, or the source of nutrition data.
I strive to keep the information as accurate as possible but make no warranties regarding its accuracy.
I encourage you to make your own calculations based on the actual ingredients used in your recipe, using your preferred nutrition calculator.
STORAGE AND FREEZING
This sauce will keep well in an airtight jar in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. It will solidify in the fridge so it will need to be left to come to room temperature or reheated gently.
Freezing: Not freezable, but it takes around 5 minutes to make if you have the ingredients at home.
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EQUIPMENT SUGGESTIONS
Recommendations include:
The whisks are ideal for mixing hot and cold batters or creams. They come in three different sizes and are very colourful.
I think I have said it before that I am not a big fan of plastic, so I like this type of glass measuring jug for calculating my liquids.
This small pan is a great size for boiling small amounts of liquids and it has pouring lips built into the rim of the saucepan which makes it easy to use.
The Gourmet Larder is an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
TIP: I highly recommend using metric measurements and a digital kitchen scale, rather than cup measurements. If you have ever ended up with dry, dense or crumbly baked goods, it might be because of inaccurate volume measurements, not all measuring cups are made equally. All my recipes on this blog are carefully developed so that you can easily recreate them in your own kitchen with success, using metric measurements. It is also a lot easier, less messy and you will get far better, consistent results. 🙂
If you are interested in understanding conversions, here you will find the best conversion chart.
RECIPE TIPS
Thicker chocolate sauce – can be achieved by adding a couple of extra tablespoons of butter if you are going to serve it cold. It you want to serve it hot, add a teaspoon of cornflour with a little milk to the cream while it comes to the boil. Remember to stir the cream continuously to avoid lumps forming. If it does get a little lumpy simply pass it through a strainer.
Chocolate Sauce
INGREDIENTS LIST
- 200 ml double or heavy cream (non-dairy alternative – coconut milk)
- 2 tbsp caster sugar
- 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract or 1/4 tsp of vanilla paste
- 100 g dark or milk chocolate
- 4 tbsp butter (60g non-dairy alternative – vegan butter)
- 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
Preparation
- Measure the cream, sugar and vanilla into a saucepan and bring it to a boil over a medium heat.
- Chop the chocolate and place it in a medium heatproof bowl with the butter and cocoa.
- Once the cream mixture has come to a boil, pour it over the chocolate in the bowl and whisk together until the chocolate has melted and the sauce is smooth.
- Finally, pour it into a serving jug or airtight container for storing.
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