This homemade chocolate sauce is rich, delicious, easy to make, and much better than store-bought chocolate syrup!
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👩🏻🍳 Why You'll Love This Homemade Chocolate Sauce
It is hard to go wrong with chocolate sauce, whether you buy it from the store or make it yourself. But my family agrees with me that this recipe produces a higher level of chocolatey deliciousness. The rich flavor is just divine!
The only problem is that now we can never go back to store-bought chocolate sauce, ha! But that is OK, because this chocolate sauce is not difficult at all to make.
The secret to making this sauce so delicious is to use coffee instead of water. It doesn't make the sauce taste like coffee, but it adds a depth and complexity to the sauce that is a perfect complement to the sweetness of all that sugar.
And, yes, there is a lot of sugar in this. It's a dessert, folks! Just don't eat spoonful after spoonful of it, as hard as it might be to resist that! A simpler version of Easy Chocolate Glaze with Powdered Sugar can also be made.
🥘 Ingredients Needed
- cocoa powder - gives your chocolate syrup a rich, chocolatey taste.
- white and brown sugar - two different kinds of sugar bring different kinds of sweetness.
- salt - helps balance out all of the sweetness.
- coffee - gives your chocolate sauce a deeper and more complex flavor.
- maple syrup - for a little bit of extra sweetness.
- semisweet morsels - ensures that the sauce has some thickness to it.
🔪 Instructions
- Mix together the cocoa powder, sugar, brown sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan.
- Pour in the coffee and stir until combined.
- Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Reduce heat and continue to stir while simmering for 5 minutes.
- Remove the mixture from the heat and add your maple syrup and semisweet morsels, then mix until everything is melted and combined.
- Allow to cool and serve however you like!
- This sauce is good on fruit, ice cream, as a dip for cookies or graham crackers, and more.
👪 FAQs
Homemade, of course!
Typically, they're mostly the same, although sometimes chocolate syrup also includes corn syrup, which gives it a thinner, more syrup-y consistency. Chocolate sauce, then, tends to be on the thicker side.
It will keep longer if stored covered in the fridge, but it will last at least a couple of days at room temperature if stored properly. The sauce will thicken considerably in the cold, but you can microwave it to thin it out again.
One way is to allow the temperature to come down; when hot, the sauce will be much runnier, but at room temperature or chilled it will be much thicker.
You could also take about a tablespoon of corn starch, dissolve it in water, and stir it into the sauce. This will probably work best in the heating step, but play around with adding it afterward as well and see what happens!
Finally, if you include more chocolate morsels, odds are the sauce will be on the thicker (and more chocolate-y!) side.
Kept covered in the fridge, your chocolate sauce should be good for 3 months or so. You can also freeze it if you do so carefully, and it can last up for a year like this. Just be sure to store it in an airtight container. It may also be wise to press a layer of plastic wrap to the surface, which can help prevent crystallizing.
If you follow the correct process, it's completely safe to do so! Check out more information here if you want to give away chocolate sauce as a gift or sell your homemade sauce!
📖 Variations and Serving Suggestions
- While this sauce would be delicious just eaten by the spoonful, you'll get the most use out of it for dipping and coating things like fruit, cookies, marshmallows, and ice cream.
- You could also stir this into some milk to make a delicious chocolate beverage. Microwave it for a homemade hot cocoa!
- Toss in a little bit of butter to give your sauce a new level of richness.
- The coffee in this sauce doesn't come through much in the flavor, so if you'd like to accentuate it sprinkle in some espresso powder.
- A few drops of an extract of your choice could change up this sauce entirely. Some mint extract would be great for Christmas or even St. Patrick's Day, and an orange or hazelnut extract will change up the flavor of this sauce deliciously!
🥗 Suggested Desserts
This chocolate sauce would be a decadent addition to these desserts! Drizzle it on top of this Chocolate Orange Cake or try it on another recipe, like Chocolate Rice Krispies Treats!
🍫 Additional Chocolate Recipes
If this chocolate syrup recipe has you craving more chocolate, try out some of these recipes!
Chocolate Sauce Recipe
Love this recipe? Awesome! Please give it a 5 star ⭐ rating below! And if you make this, snap a photo and tag me on Instagram. You can find me at DizzyBusyandHungry or #dizzybusyandhungry!
📋 Recipe Card
Best Homemade Chocolate Sauce
Ingredients
- ¾ cup cocoa powder
- ¾ cup sugar
- ¾ cup brown sugar
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup cold coffee (can be decaf or regular)
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- ¼ cup semisweet morsels
Instructions
- In a medium saucepan, mix the cocoa powder, sugar, brown sugar, and salt.¾ cup cocoa powder, ¾ cup sugar, ¾ cup brown sugar, ¼ teaspoon salt
- Add the coffee and vanilla and whisk until well combined.1 cup cold coffee, 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- Place the saucepan over medium heat and bring it to boiling, stirring constantly.
- Reduce heat and simmer for about 5 minutes, continuing to stir.
- Remove from heat and the semisweet morsels, stirring until they are all melted.¼ cup semisweet morsels
- Allow to cool and serve over ice cream, fruit, etc.
- Store leftovers covered in the refrigerator. It will get very thick when cold, but you can microwave it briefly to get a thinner sauce.
Notes
- Don't have brewed coffee handy? Go ahead and dissolve a rounded teaspoon of instant into one cup of water. No need to even heat it up!
- Note that it takes quite a bit of whisking to get the cocoa powder to incorporate. And even then a lot of it seems to sit on top. Don't worry about it, just keep going, it will eventually all come together.
- Drizzle this sauce on fruit, cookies, ice cream and more.
- Mix your chocolate syrup into some milk for a delicious chocolate-y beverage. You could also microwave this for hot chocolate.
- For added richness, stir in a tablespoon or so of butter.
- Add espresso powder if you want to accentuate the coffee flavor.
- Using flavored extracts can change the flavor of this sauce. Try mint, orange, or hazelnut to get different variations of this sauce.
Video
Nutrition
Nutritional information is an estimate. The nutritional values for your final dish may vary based on measuring differences and products used.
Update Notes: This post was originally published in May 2015, but was republished with tips, step by step photos, and a recipe change in November 2020.
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Happy cooking!
Mellissia Taylor
Hi Kristen if I wanted to make this recipe to yield 50lbs of chocolate sauce how can I adjust the salt?
Kristin King
Wow, that's a lot of chocolate sauce! Well, you would do the math. I would recommend that first you make the recipe as described to make sure that this sauce is exactly what you need. It would be a shame to make 50 pounds worth only to find out it won't work for your purposes. Once you make it, weigh it to see how much it yields. Let's say it makes 8 ounces of sauce (I'm making that up because I haven't weighed it). So you would have to multiple the recipe by 2 to make one pound, and then multiply by 50 to get your 50 pounds. So in this example you would need to multiply all ingredients by 100 (2 x 50). You would do that for the salt as well. So you would need 75 cups each of the cocoa powder, sugar, and brown sugar, 25 teaspoons of salt, 100 cups of coffee, 100 tablespoons of vanilla extract, and 25 cups of semisweet morsels. Remember, that's just an example, you would need to figure out the initial weight for yourself and then do the math. Good luck!
Beth
I love to make my favorite treats from scratch so I am excited to have this new recipe! I may just dip everything in this creamy, chocolatey sauce!
Kristin
Fruit is definitely my favorite thing to dip or drizzle. Apple slices, banana rounds, strawberries, pineapple chunks...YUM!
Emily
Love all the variations for this chocolate sauce recipe. This makes a great gift for neighbors during the holidays!
Kristin
I agree, this is definitely a great idea to give in pretty decorated mason jars!
Chris Collins
I could drizzle this over just about everything! Can't believe how easy it is to make 🙂
Kristin
I agree, I love how easy it is and it is well-worth spending a little bit of time to make it instead of using the store-bought kind. Thanks, Chris!
Michelle
Omg. This is absolutely perfect, and I want to put it on ev.er.y.thing.
Kristin
Yes, me too! I especially love to drizzle it over sliced banana. YUM!
Cate
I've never made my own chocolate sauce and this looks so smooth and flavorful! Thanks for sharing!
Kristin
You're welcome, Cate! 🙂
cliff kancler
Very nice, thank you for the proportions, made this with cold brew coffee, bourbon and Valhrona chocolate
Kristin
Oh, that sounds delicious! Thanks for stopping by and leaving your feedback! 🙂
Olga
please forgive me, "¼ cup semisweet morsels" it means Chocolate Chips?
Kristin King
Yes, that is what I mean. Sorry if it is unclear! 🙂
Donna Royal
Try adding a little Bailey's Irish Cream the the cake and the sauce. Tastes best after It's had a couple of days to marinate.
Helen at the Lazy Gastronome
I love the simplicity of your recipes and this one does not disappoint! Thanks for sharing at the What's for Dinner party!