Magic Chocolate Fudge Sauce
Let me first say, and I absolutely mean this as a compliment, that I have never and I mean never seen anyone eat ice cream the way Ben eats ice cream. He has an adorable, insatiable love for grocery store ice cream. Nothing particularly fancy or expensive. No seasonal flavors, just normal, sold-in-paper-cartons ice cream.
One Sunday when we were dating, I went over to Ben’s parents’ house and he asked if I wanted some ice cream. I was equally shocked and delighted when he brought over a bowl of ice cream that must have had a quarter of a carton of mint chocolate chip ice cream in it. I’m serious. I had never been served that much ice cream to eat, by myself. I don’t remember if I finished it.
Anyway, not to be one of those food blogs with an unnecessarily long story before the recipe, but here we are I guess. You’re trapped.
Ben eats ice cream almost every night. It’s part of the sacred bedtime wind down after we wrestle the boys into bed and tell Bonky the Chicken stories. (By the way, tonight Bonky made ice cream pizza, which is just a giant cookie covered in fudge sauce and ice cream and whipped cream and sprinkles. We’ve clearly all got ice cream on the brain tonight, but that might be because it’s 104 degrees outside.) Lately, Ben doesn’t even reach for chocolate ice cream or mint ice cream. It’s plain vanilla, and this chocolate sauce, which is a marriage of his mom’s chocolate fudge sauce and my mom’s chocolate fudge sauce.
It will never let you down. Not just because it’s perfect - silky, just the right amount of chocolatey, sweet but not too sweet, but because you pretty much can’t mess it up. It will not curdle or go randomly sugar grainy. It keeps perfectly in the fridge, for at least a few days. It probably lasts longer, but I honestly can’t know for sure because it never makes it that long, partially because Fritz has discovered eating it cold by the spoonful out of the fridge. He calls it “Fridge Chocolate.”
Cooled, it is basically fudge, because, well, this sauce is exactly half a step away from being ganache. Slightly warm, it’s thick enough to have a definitively fudgey quality — so, not just chocolate flavoring for your ice cream, but something much, much better.
Magic Hot Fudge Sauce
Equal parts Michelle Lehnardt (Ben’s mom) Kristin Drysdale (my mom) and me
12 fluid ounces heavy whipping cream (or 354 ml)
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips*
1/2 cup salted butter
pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup powdered sugar
Heat cream, chocolate chips, and butter in a saucepan until the chocolate and butter are melted and the mixture comes together to form a smooth sauce, whisking lazily but pretty much constantly, because both burned chocolate and burned cream are tragedies. Bring to just barely a simmer, then turn down the heat to low and add the powdered sugar. Whisk quickly to break up any sugar clumps. Remove heat and add pinch of salt (you can add more for salted chocolate sauce, if you’re feeling fancy) and vanilla. We usually store ours in a little glass jar so that it’s ready for its nightly pilgrimage to the microwave.
*We use tollhouse chocolate chips 98 percent of the time. Which isn’t to say it will be bad if you use something more intense, but you don’t need to. I once used a leftover bag of super chocolatey feves, and while we initially pronounced it the BEST CHOCOLATE SAUCE EVER, it was a little too slippery, and definitely mixing some of the fudgey texture we love so much. Probably because the feves had fewer stabilizers than the chocolate chips. (AmIReadyForBakeOffYet?!??!)
