Chocolate Syrup

It's been a while.

There, with that out of the way...

K and I, I might as well admit, are crunchy. At least, that's what she tells me! It doesn't bother me either way, really, it's just a label. But I do like the cloth diapers, and making our own stuff when possible, and the organic food really does seem to taste better. My favorite part is totally making our own food, like the things that we would normally buy prepackaged and over-processed.

My most recent was chocolate syrup, like you'd use to make chocolate milk. Hershey's Syrup for those with trademarks on the mind. Well, after checking out the ingredients and looking around, I decided to try to make my own. The fact that they had to add the word 'flavor' after the words 'Genuine Chocolate' had no small part in this decision.

First, I found Alton Brown's recipe from the Art of Darkness II episode of Good Eats. Man, I love that show. One part mad science, one part cooking, one part crazy. But some of his recipes, though incredibly smart and tasty, are way over-complicated, or require some very hard-to-get things for a dad on a budget. This recipe isn't any of those things, but I still didn't like it. It called for corn syrup which, well, lets just say I'm wary. So I left out the syrup, but the result was less than satisfactory: it was watery, over-sugary, and not very chocolaty.

So I found another recipe online, through another blog, and tried that one out too! Turns out this one was much the same, watery and not chocolaty. So it was time to experiment.

On a basic level, the recipes are all pretty much the same: a simple syrup of 2:1 sugar to water, and some cocoa, about 1/4 as much cocoa as syrup, a dash of salt, and some vanilla. So I thought, hey, what if I use some of these chocolate chips we have in the fridge instead of cocoa? Maybe that'll make the flavor right. So with some backwards conversion, I ended up taking out a little of the sugar for the syrup and boiling it all with some chocolate chips instead. It didn't really help, and it ended up adding some unnecessary oils, too. Not a big deal, mind you, but still. Simple ingredient conversions aside, it was time to think about what the real problem was.

It wasn't chocolaty enough! It just tasted like I added some sugar water to the milk with a hint of chocolate in it. And usually the vanilla taste overpowered the chocolate. So, easy solution: reduce the syrup, increase the cocoa (well, not both at the same time) and remove the vanilla. So that's what I did, actually double the amount of chocolate chips I put in. And it was better! But still not great. You could taste the water, in the milk, and it was off-putting and weird. Yeah, I know, water is tasteless and blah blah no it's not. Even if you add some water and then boil it away you can still taste it, which is why so many cooks on the Food Network add other liquids like stocks or juices or alcohol when they need to make their dishes more watery instead of just water. It makes things taste cheap. So, what's the solution? Well, what am I going to be mixing this stuff into? Milk!

Well, the conclusion for me wasn't that cut and dry: I actually did some other research first, upon thinking to myself that I wanted to make it taste like fudge. Actually, specifically, I wanted it to taste like my mom's fudge syrup. (Story behind that: Mom used to try to make fudge when I was really young, and unfortunately fail - I think it was the lack of a candy thermometer so she'd know when it was hot enough, with a touch of impatience: I mean, it's fudge! You just want to eat it. Her fudge trials would end up being this sticky liquid goop that tasted oh-so very good on vanilla ice cream and made an awesome shell when it cooled. Not the kind you'd have to crack, but it sure did stick to your spoon.) I'd asked Mom before where she got her fudge recipe, and she'd told me her old Joy of Cooking, which I'd gotten a copy of from my brother as a birthday present. If you don't have one and you like cooking, go get one! It's kind of old and stuffy, but the information and techniques are incredibly useful. I jokingly refer to it as my master's spellbook, while I'm writing my own spell book with my own, translated spells in it (OMG D&D REFERENCE WHO'S SURPRISED). So I looked up the fudge recipes in there, and was surprised to find the basic recipe was the same: simple syrup of 2:1, about 1/4 as much cocoa, and some salt. Of course, as cocoa, they involved a lot more boiling and getting to the right temperature, and then usually adding a little butter at the very end, but the basics were the same. But, one of them (fudge cockaigne, whatever that means) called for milk as part of the simple syrup instead of water! Perfect!

So I tried it. And it was awesome. So here it is:

1 cup milk
6 tbsp cocoa powder
1/8 tsp salt
1 1/2 cup sugar

Bring all of this almost to a boil at low heat, stirring often. Let stand to cool, then add to milk until the desired color and flavor. Best if stirred with a whisk.