When I was younger mum used to have a bottle of homemade chocolate syrup in the fridge for putting into milk or on top of icecream. When I moved down here I was excited when Hershey's syrup showed up in the supermarket and I thought it was pretty good (though rather expensive). I hadn't had it for ages though, until recently when I got some to make cold chocolate milks for Hazel. It was awful! I'm not sure if my tastes have changed, or their recipe, but it was way too sweet and not very chocolatey. So I went in search of recipes for the homemade kind which I remember being so rich and intense.
I can't remember which recipes I cobbled this together from, but it's quite wonderful and next time I'm going to use a really good cocoa instead of the bog-standard Cadbury's and it'll be even better! Even with the regular cocoa this is much much nicer than the commercially available versions, not to mention cheaper. And even if you use more expensive cocoa I figure that the increase in intensity of flavour would simply reduce the amount you needed to use and hence the cost per mug. That's my reasoning to justify a trip to Sabato for the madly expensive cocoa anyways. Seriously, once you've had this stuff it's hard to go back to Cadbury's! Sadly, the budget does dictate it happens all too often (like pretty much always).
1 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups water*
1-2 teaspoons vanilla extract (to taste)
Mix the cocoa and the water in a saucepan. Heat and stir to dissolve the cocoa. Add the sugar, and stir to dissolve. Boil for 3 minutes over medium heat. Add the salt and the vanilla. Let cool. Pour into a sterile glass jar, and store in the refrigerator. Keeps for several months.
*If you want a thicker syrup use 1 cup water. My syrup is a good pouring consistency, but might run off icecream a bit too fast (haven't tested this yet!)
