Chocolate Syrup

My boys love chocolate milk in the morning. We have coffee and they have chocolate milk. Lately we have really been trying hard to reduce and eventually eliminate our use of High Fructose Corn Syrup(HFCS) in our diets. It is a very difficult battle that has caused me to start cooking and baking a lot more than I used to. Most of what is on the store shelves has HFCS in it whether it is needed or not(usually not in my opinion). We have been out of chocolate milk for a few days now, and in order to stop the whining that comes with not having something they really want, I made a batch of Chocolate Syrup. I started to follow a recipe that I found on the internet then modified it a bit. The next batch will also be changed up a bit more, because I found this one to be very sweet(too sweet).

The recipe on the internet with changes:

1.5 cups of unsweetened cocoa powder

2 cups of sugar

1 cup of water

1 Tablespoon Butter

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup of chocolate chips

Mix the Cocoa Powder and sugar until the cocoa is no longer lumpy. Add to a pot and add water and butter. Cook until boiling. Continue to let boil for a minute or two then turn the heat down to low and cover the pot do not stir* let it cook for 3minutes. Take off the heat stir in the chocolate chips until melted and let it cool add the salt and vanilla and stir well. Let it cool completely and store in a glass container.

*Stirring and scraping the sides of the pot will create sugar crystals in the mixture and make it grainy. By letting it cook with the cover on it reduces and sometimes eliminates this problem. Alton Brown taught me that on his fudge episode(really great episode). Just don't cook at too high a temperature.

My changes for the next batch:

1.5 cups of unsweetened cocoa powder

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of water

1 Tablespoon Butter

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate chips(Ghirardelli are our favorite)

Now, if only we had ice cream in the house!