This rich chocolate fudge sauce is deeply chocolatey and decadent! Drizzle on cheesecakes, fruit, tarts, or ice cream! It takes any dessert to the next level.
A good chocolate fudge sauce is shockingly hard to come by these days. Most are disappointments: too thin, too grainy, too sweet, not enough chocolate. Sadness. ?
Well if you’ve been around here for a minute, then you know I do not do sadness or disappointment in desserts.
Especially when it comes to chocolate. If you promise me chocolate fudge sauce, it better damn-well taste like chocolate and be almost chewy like fudge. Expectations are set high. It’s how my mother raised me.
This chocolate sauce, however, is delightfully thick and almost chewy but also magically melts in your mouth. It is sinfully chocolate and not too sweet. There is a hint of vanilla from the spent vanilla bean pod I throw in. The vanilla and salt enhance the chocolate flavor and round out all the chocolate notes.
I’m serious. This chocolate sauce is amazing and you need to just make a batch, cool it, and then store it in a jar in your fridge. It will be there for you like a good friend on a tough day or a crackling fire on a cold Northeastern night. It will also be there as an ice cream topping or dessert sauce to really nail home that easy entertaining vibe you are going for.
I see you and I am here to help. ?
There is a jar in my fridge right now. The other night I got home from work and I was tired and a bit saddened by the lack of leadership around the future of restaurants in NYC. I opened my fridge and there was the chocolate fudge sauce waiting for me. I literally dipped fresh cherries straight into it. It was fabulous. It didn’t change the fate of indoor dining in New York City, but it was ?
I have also been known to just dip a spoon straight into that thick, velvety chocolate goodness. What is one more secret amongst friends ?
You also know I can’t leave you without dispensing just a small amount of advice!
Chocolate Fudge Sauce Tips:
- The spent vanilla bean pod is optional and you could just add a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste at the end; however, nothing tastes quite like the real thing. I scrape and use the seeds in recipes that really benefit from them like pastry cream, cheesecake or rice pudding. Then I save the “spent” pods in a sealed container at room temperature until I am ready to use them.
- I use Dutch Processed Vahlrona cocoa powder. It’s God’s gift. No, they don’t pay me to say that. Use the highest quality you can find within your budget. Skip the vanilla bean and splurge on cocoa powder!
- If your chocolate sauce boils over (trust me this happens…watch the video!), just change the pot and keep cooking it. It’s a pain but the sauce is worth the hassle.
- Similarly if your chocolate sauce starts to burn, change the pot and don’t scrape the sides or bottom. Taste it and see if it has any burnt taste. If not, you are basically the Superman of Chocolate Sauce! You saved the day!
- It is super important to check in with your sauce every now and again. Give it a whisk, feel if it is sticking on the bottom, smell the sauce, and see if any adjustments need to be made. This is key. It’s just like a friend: you won’t know they are truly in need if you don’t check in every now and again.
- After about 15 minutes, I stop scraping the sides back into the pot. The sauce on the sides has a tendency to burn and I don’t want to incorporate that flavor into my sauce.
- There is no wrong way to combine the ingredients here, but I have a preferred method for my own reasons. As I usually do ?
Recipe
Chocolate Fudge Sauce
Ingredients
- 282 g Sugar
- 120 g Cocoa Powder
- 4 g Kosher Salt
- ½ Vanilla bean pod (already scraped of the seeds)
- 236 g Heavy Cream
- 100 g Water
Instructions
- In a sauce pot that is at least 3 quarts (the deeper the better), whisk together the sugar, cocoa powder and salt.
- Add the vanilla bean pod followed by the cream and water.
- Whisk gently to combine. You have to have a little patience here. Cocoa powder is hydrophobic (like cats ?) and it doesn’t want to hydrate and mix with the water and cocoa powder. Just keep whisking and it will succumb to your will eventually (unlike cats!).
- Heat over medium heat until it begins to boil. Reduce heat to low and allow to simmer until thickened. You can use a candy thermometer (205°) but I like to test it like jam on a frozen or refrigerated plate. Just dab a bit on the plate and hold it vertically. If the sauce runs, it isn’t done. If it holds a line, it is done.
- Strain sauce if desired, or just pick out the vanilla pod. Cool sauce in an ice bath. To make an ice bath fill a larger bowl with ice and a little bit of water. Nestle the bowl with the sauce in it inside the larger bowl.
- Cover the top of the sauce with plastic wrap to keep it from forming a skin and poke a few holes for steam to escape. Place the whole set up (water bath and all) in the refrigerator until it is completely cooled.
- Transfer to a sealable jar. Store in the refrigerator for up to a month. (See note)
Video Instructions
Notes
Please note that cooling the sauce properly extends it’s shelf-life. The ice bath cools down the sauce within 2 hours, which will reduce the risk of bacteria multiplying. This means that you can store the final sauce for longer than if you did not take care to cool it properly. If you see any mold growth when you open the jar – throw it out! Sometimes this happens if the jar was not clean or if someone double dips a spoon in the jar…cough, cough. We’ve all been that person.
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