Do you have a crazy kid like mine who is kind of obsessed with dunkin donuts hot chocolate? Then this chocolate syrup recipe, for making hot chocolate is exactly for you. Yeah, am aware this is not the right time of the year for a hot chocolate recipe, as its peak summer in most of the earth. But for kids nothing matters when it comes to chocolate, be it in any form.
And seriously!! I have been going on making this over and over again in the past few months for my kids. Now the hot chocolate made from this syrup, has become their ‘go to’ drink. So thought I should do justice to the other kids around, by sharing this recipe with their mommies 😀 .
The general rule of thumb for me to sweeten cocoa powder is to add cocoa and sugar in the ratio of 1:3. This ratio worked perfectly for me in my Chocolate icecream as it tends to be more sweet. But in this chocolate syrup, sugar is considerably reduced. So it tastes more like a syrup, made of dark chocolate.
Chocolate syrup has myriad uses. It can be used top icecreams, pancakes, cakes, and what not? But the best use is in making hot chocolate.
The basic recipe has been adapted from allrecipes.com, with little tweaks from my side. I came up with this idea of mixing up cocoa powder with hot water before adding it to the boiling syrup, rather than adding it as a powder, as mentioned in the recipe.
This is called blooming of the cocoa powder and the process intensifies the chocolate flavour. The syrup comes together quickly and stays eternally in the refrigerator, without getting spoilt .
I would suggest that you try this with a third of the measures given in the recipe before increasing the quantity. That is try out with 1/3 cup of cocoa powder, 1/2 cup of water, 1/2 cup of sugar and 1 tsp vanilla sugar.
Then you can decide on whether to increase sugar or proceed as is. If you plan to increase sugar increase water also accordingly. This recipe will save you quite a few bucks, and you will start asking, hersheys who? 😀 .
Dunkin donuts hot chocolate was one of the causes of my woes, coz of my elder one’s addiction to it. Every time we pass an outlet, he has to have it. They serve it in a paper cup with a sippable plastic lid. The whole world is aware that having hot drinks in plastic is harmful, but these people will never change.
A heated argument will ensue between me and my son as he refuses to listen to me, not to sip through the plastic lid. He will justify saying that everyone has it that way, and thats why it has been provided.
Now I can confidently say that I weaned him from dunkin donuts hot chocolate 🙂 and made my younger one who does not like hot chocolate, fall in love with mine. Seriously its that good.
My son gave me an ‘A’ for the hot chocolate I made for him out of this syrup. He said that if he could give dunkin donuts hot chocolate 9, he could give 8.5 for this.
P.S -Interested people may look up the list of ingredients in dunkin donuts hot chocolate as well as hershey’s chocolate syrup. Get to the “View nutrition” tab in dunkin donuts to view their list of ingredients for all the flavours.
Bet you will agree with my thought – the homemade version is a lot better 🙂 . And when the kids enjoy it, the happiness is complete.
Lets get to the recipe…
Chocolate Syrup
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsweetened natural cocoa powder
- 1.5 cups sugar
- 1.5 cups water
- 1 tbsp vanilla sugar / ½ tbsp vanilla extract
- a pinch salt
Instructions
- Heat up the water to rolling boil and mix as much as needed with the cocoa powder to form a very smooth paste without lumps. Let sit.
- In the remaining water add the sugar and heat it up. Let it melt completely and come to a boil.
- Now add in the cocoa paste, vanilla, and salt. Mix well and cook till it thickens, about 5-10 minutes.
- Once it thickens, switch off the stove, cool down and store in airtight bottles.
- To prepare hot chocolate, add about 1/2 -1 tbsp of syrup and sugar as needed to 1 cup of hot milk. Mix well and serve.
Hema’s P.S
- The taste of this syrup is mildly bitter, more like dark chocolate.
- Do not add the cocoa powder directly to the sugar syrup without mixing in hot water. Coz the powder will keep kind of floating when you prepare the hot chocolate.
- Simmer the syrup for atleast 7-10 minutes to thicken it. It will thicken more in the refrigerator.
- The sugar for this quantity of cocoa powder may not be enough for the syrup to be used as a topping for icecreams or cakes. So try out a smaller quantity with the scaled down measures before deciding on the sugar. Though this works fine for us.
- I always use raw sugar, which is why the sugar syrup looks brown.
- You can use vanilla extract/ vanilla sugar / vanilla essence /vanilla bean whichever is available for you.
