Homemade Chocolate Sauce/Syrup

Homemade Chocolate Sauce

I was reading an article in O Magazine about good things to eat/drink after a workout, and to my delight, chocolate milk was said to be a great after-workout drink!

"An enticing body of nutritional science suggests that you should eat or drink immediately after exercising, in order to help your muscles recover. If the foods you ingest contain both carbohydrates and protein, your muscles will refuel more fully. And if the food is low-fat chocolate milk, even better; it contains a nearly physiologically ideal ratio of carbs to protein. Experiments have shown that people who drink chocolate milk after a workout recover better, lose more body fat, and gain more muscle than subjects who have a sports drink. The caveat: If you don't exercise vigorously for at least 45 minutes, you don't need recovery chocolate. That's incentive enough to get me out on the trails a few times a week."

My husband was very excited to hear this news, and he quickly reminded me that he'd been wanting chocolate milk for quite a while! And I reminded him that there wasn't a chocolate sauce on the market that was safe for our daughter due to her food allergies.

And he just smiled and waited for me to make a recipe for chocolate sauce. The recipe I came up with is not very sugary tasting; it has a strong dark chocolate flavor. It is great in chocolate milk, in hot chocolate, on ice cream, in iced coffee drinks, etc.

Homemade Chocolate Sauce/Syrup

Ingredients:

1/4 cup plus 2 Tbs organic sugar

1/3 cup water

1/3 cup cocoa

1/2 tsp homemade vanilla extract

dash of table salt

Directions:

1. Mix sugar and 1/3 cup water in small saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat.

2. Whisk in the cocoa until the mixture it is completely smooth.

3. Remove from the heat and add the vanilla.

4. Let it cool completely.

5. Store in an airtight jar in the refrigerator.

To make the chocolate milk, mix in however much sauce/syrup you like and a pinch of salt to a cup of milk.