Cook it Fresh

Mrs. Richardson's hot fudge topping on the left, homemade hot fudge on the right

This week I’m following up my last post on Butterscotch sauce with the ever-popular Hot Fudge, my personal favorite ice cream topping.  My dad was always the hot fudge maker in our house growing up and I still use his super easy recipe.  This hot fudge is so good that you can eat it out of the bowl by the spoonfuls without even heating it up.  In fact, I think my dad might even prefer it that way!  Honestly, I’m not very familiar with store bought hot fudge sauce because we always had it homemade growing up.  Since then, I’ve never seen any reason to buy it in a jar since it’s so easy to make!  However, in the interest of culinary experimentation, I bought my first jar of store bought hot fudge sauce this week and we compared it to my dad’s classic recipe.

Dad’s Hot Fudge Sauce

This recipe relies on a basic, easy formula:  2 parts chocolate to 1 part cream.  So, if you want to make a larger batch, it is very easy to double or triple the recipe.  Also, you can substitute whole milk or evaporated milk for the whipping cream, it just makes a slightly thinner sauce.

Makes about 3 cups (it will go fast!)

Ingredients:

2 cups semisweet chocolate chips or finely chopped semisweet chocolate

1 cup heavy whipping cream

Place all the ingredients in a medium, microwave-proof bowl.  Microwave on high for 2 minutes, stopping to stir every 30 seconds.  At first, it seems like the cream and chocolate will not combine completely, but if you keep melting and stirring, it will come together into a thick, creamy sauce!  If you do not have a microwave,  you can just place all the ingredients in a medium saucepan and heat on medium-low heat until it combines, whisking constantly.

As a comparison to this homemade fudge sauce I bought Mrs. Richardson’s hot fudge topping.  To heat this jarred sauced, you spoon the desired amount into a microwave proof bowl and microwave for 20 seconds or until it is heated through, then spoon it on top of the ice cream.  The resulting two sauces were very different in both texture and taste.  Mrs. Richardson’s sauce was described as “gelatinous” and “gloppy” by one taster in a blind taste test of the two sauces.  I also found it overly sweet and lacking in the deep, rich chocolate flavor of the homemade version.  No matter how much I heated the jarred sauce, it never really drizzled smoothly over the ice cream, it came out more as a plop.  Dad’s homemade fudge sauce remains the winner in our book!

The prices below are based on 2 cups of sauce, since that’s how much came in the jar.

Bottom Line: Store bought fudge sauce still requires a certain amount of heating and stirring before use so it’s not much more convenient than homemade and it was far inferior in both flavor and texture.

Homemade Fudge Sauce                                     Mrs. Richardson’s Hot Fudge Topping

Cost:  $3.00                                                                     Cost:  $3.99

Time:  about 4 minutes                                                  Time:  1 minute