Homemade Chocolate Syrup

I love chocolate.  Like, seriously love chocolate.  Milk chocolate, dark chocolate, whatever.  And, for the record, American chocolate sucks compared to British/European chocolate.  Don't believe me?  Go find yourself a Cadbury's Dairy Milk bar.  Or, better yet, a Terry's Chocolate Orange.  That is some fabulous shit right there.

Now, I'm on a dairy restriction, which unfortunately means I'm limited on my chocolate options.  Even more unfortunately, 'no dairy' means 'no creamer in my morning coffee'.  (Side note:  Don't even tell me that there's non-dairy creamer out there.  Read the labels and I guarantee that odds are it will list milk, whey, and/or casesin, which are all MILK.  And, yes, I've tried almond milk and it was gross.)  I have a hard time drinking coffee black, so 'no creamer' means 'no coffee' which means 'seriously grouchy Mommy'.  No coffee AND no chocolate?  Are you fricking kidding me?

Never fear.  I found a solution that solves both problems.  Kind of.

A while back, dear hubby went through a chocolate milk phase.  I got tired of buying the bottle of chocolate syrup at the store and decided to see if I could make my own.  Plus, have you ever looked at the ingredients for store-bought chocolate syrup?

The ingredients of Hershey's Chocolate Syrup (as per their website):

HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP; CORN SYRUP; WATER; COCOA; SUGAR; CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF: POTASSIUM SORBATE (PRESERVATIVE); SALT; MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES; XANTHAN GUM; POLYSORBATE 60; VANILLIN, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR

So, out of the first five ingredients, 3 of them are sugar.  Nice.

Anyway, I found a recipe for homemade chocolate syrup.  It has 5 ingredients:  sugar, cocoa, water, salt, and vanilla.  That's it.  I've been making this for a while and using it in my morning coffee.  Not as good as creamer, but it has a nice café mocha feel to it.

Let's get down to it, shall we?  This will hardly take any time at all.  This recipe made around 2-1/4 cups of syrup.

1.  Get your ingredients together.  You'll need:

• 1-1/4 cup Sugar
• 1 cup Unsweetened cocoa powder 
• 1 cup Water
• 1 tsp Salt
• 2 tsp Vanilla (and any other flavoring you might want)

2.  In a saucepan, whisk together your sugar and cocoa, getting rid of as many lumps as possible.

3.  Stir in your water and salt.

4.  Heat to boiling over medium heat, stirring frequently.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  Please, for all that is good in this world, do NOT leave your sauce pan unattended.  I made the mistake of stepping away from the stove to get my kid something the last time I made this, and the chocolate boiled over.  It made a hell of a mess.  So, don't do that.  Also, if your heat is too high, the chocolate will start to burn, and that's just a sad smell.  Don't do that either, okay?

5.  Let mixture boil for about 5 minutes or until thickened.  Keeping stirring frequently.

6.  Once the syrup has thickened, remove from the heat and let stand 5-10 mins.

7.  Stir in the vanilla extract.  Allow mixture to cool and then store in fridge in an airtight container.  You can also experiment with other flavors.  For example, today I added a splash of peppermint along with the vanilla.  Most tasty!  But you're not allowed to blame me if you put something weird in there and it comes out funky.  Also, the texture does tend to get a bit grainy after it's been refrigerated a while.  If that bothers you, you can warm it up (stirring frequently) and that should take care of the graininess.  

Enjoy!