Thursday, August 30, 2007

Chocolate and butterscotch sauces

These sauces are wonderful on ice cream and are so simple. Never buy a squeeze bottle of Hersey's chocolate sauce again! You could do a rockin' banana split with these. Alternatively pour them on cake or brownies or just eat them w/ a spoon! The quality of the sauces depends on the quality of the ingredients.

For the chocolate, I tend to use Callebaut dark chocolate, good unsalted butter, and Tahitian vanilla extract. I like the chocolate sauce with coffee ice cream. Butterscotch is good on butter pecan. But nothing beats plain old vanilla. Get the Dreamery brand of vanilla if you can find it. It won the highest marks from a Cooks' Illustrated blind taste test.

Chocolate sauce:
4 oz bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
4 T (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1/4 c. sugar
pinch of salt
1/4 c. water
1t vanilla extract

1. Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan except vanilla. Cook, stirring, over low heat until melted.

2. Stir in vanilla. Serve immediately.

Butterscotch sauce:
3/4 c. heavy cream
6 T unsalted butter cut into pieces
3/4 c. brown sugar
pinch of salt

1. Combine cream and butter in a small saucepan and cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally until the butter melts.

2. Stir in the sugar and salt. Cook, stirring frequently, until the mixture is think and shiny, 5 to 10 minutes. Taste it and add more sugar if needed. Serve immediately.

7 comments:

Lenore said...

How much sugar do you put in the butterscotch sauce?

Your blog is great. :)

K said...

Whoops! 3/4 c. brown sugar. Thanks for catching that. Sometimes I think faster than I can type.

Joseph H. Vilas said...

Serve immediately, but make extra and put in the refrigerator. Then sneak back in the kitchen repeatedly over the next few days, grab a spoon, dig out a little, and eat it. One can quickly wind up with a sinkful of dirty spoons. :)

Anonymous said...

Can these be reheated or must we gobble them down as fast as possible?

I'd love to replace the squeeze bottle with my own jar of sauce I can pull out when I serve ice cream...

K said...

When put in the fridge, these harden somewhat (at least they are not pourable). You can reheat them in the microwave and the runny consistency will return.

Anonymous said...

Sounds good! Thanks

Anonymous said...

ack, I've put in the wrong address for my last two comments. Silly me!

This one's right.