Happy Birthday to anyone who is having an anniversary today! In honor of such I am providing chocolate recipes. Also, I’m busy running around with family affairs…

First,

Chocolate Syrup. 

It’s dead simple and I keep getting it wrong by not paying attention or using an alarm.

1 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder ~+~+~

1 1/2 cups of water

1/1/2 cups of sugar

A pinch of salt

1 tsp vanilla

Mix the cocoa and sugar together in a sauce pan. Add a pinch of salt. Add the water and stir. Bring to a boil over medium heat, still stirring occasionally, and PAY ATTENTION to when the mixture starts bubbling. Let it bubble for five minutes. ~+~ Set the alarm!  Remove from heat, add the vanilla, stir, and cool. Stick in a jar. If the lid has a pouring spout that’s a bonus. I keep my syrup in the fridge but don’t know if I need to. Syrup that you buy goes in the fridge so syrup that I make goes there as well. 

~+~I actually have no idea how long it should bubble. This is where I have failed repeatedly. However, it doesn’t matter, unless you let it go far enough to become fudge. My syrup has been fairly thin and also thick. Just use different amounts in your glass of milk. 

~+~+~  In the matter of cocoa powder, I have discovered that I have preferences that are a bit surprising. My favorite is the double chocolate powder you can buy from a flour company. In addition, I like one of the powders that begin with G, but not the other. The shorter name, that isn’t associated with San Francisco, makes syrup that I like better. For making syrup I don’t like the powder that begins with S and has 4 syllables. Both the G and the S powders made perfectly fine chocolate ice cream. And the powder that begins with H but isn’t Special works just fine, surprisingly enough. 

Here’s the ice cream recipe, although it’s not really a winter deal.

Chocolate Ice Cream

Mix together 3/4 cup of cocoa and 1 cup of brown sugar. Add 2 cups of cream and stir well. A pinch of salt is always good. Add 1 tsp vanilla and three cups of milk. Pour mixture into an ice cream machine and freeze. My machine makes two quarts of ice cream from this recipe. I don’t add expresso because the other grandmother doesn’t like coffee and she’s often been around when I make this stuff. Feel free to be different.

Chocolate Butter 

If you made a thick version of your chocolate syrup you can cream some of it together with a stick of butter. Start with a 1/4 cup of the thicker syrup and see what you think. This stuff is spreadable on anything. Cookies, plain bread, fruit, cake. The real recipe is in the book called Fancy Pantry.

And, you can make 

Ganache 

by pouring some chocolate chips into a bowl, adding a bit of milk, or cream, (in a ratio of about 4:1) and microwaving it for a few seconds. 1 cup of chips would be about 20 seconds. That’s way too long for 1/2 a cup. Take out and stir. Microwave again for 5 seconds if necessary. Stir well when the mixture is microwaved. The mixture really doesn’t need or benefit from a lot of heat. If half the chocolate melts in the microwave, the rest will melt when you stir. Get a cookie and dip. Or fruit — strawberries or raspberries or bananas. 

Enjoy!