How to Make a Healthier Chocolate Sauce

Chocolate sauce is the perfect medicine for the winter!

Chinese Medicinal Benefits:

According to Chinese medicine, dark chocolate and cacao nibs are warming foods. For those who aren’t familiar with the concept of cooling and warming foods, in Chinese medicine, foods can affect your body differently. Depending on your existing body’s composition of cool and hot energy, it’s advised to sometimes eat more of certain foods to help balance out the body, and maintain equilibrium.

Chocolate is a warming food, meaning that it helps to clear out cool and damp energy from the body, which is especially important for the winter. Cool and damp energy is also responsible for bad period cramps, so eating more chocolate during your period can actually be beneficial! However, it’s important to have dark chocolate, as it’s generally advised to not ingest too much sugar.

How to Make Chocolate Syrup in 10 Minutes:

For this chocolate sauce recipe, I’ve decreased the sugar amount and increased the cocoa powder, so you can gain the most benefits.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup Dutch processed cocoa powder (Guittard brand is my favorite!)

• 1 cup water

• 1/3 cup sugar

• 4 oz 60%+ dark chocolate

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

• Filter the cocoa powder through a fine sieve into a bowl

• Mix in the sugar, 1 tbsp at a time, whisking the cocoa powder with the sugar each time

• Take a sauce pan and add in 1 tbsp of the cocoa + sugar mixture, then just enough water to saturate it

• Whisk the water and powder together until well mixed, then continue doing it until the powder and water are all mixed together

• Once the mixture is boiling a little, add in the 1 tsp of vanilla extract, and keep cooking until the liquid starts to thicken

• While the syrup is heating up, chop up the bar of chocolate

• Once the syrup has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon, take off the heat, then mix in the chopped chocolate

• Whisk the chocolate well and that’s it! Enjoy!