Small Win #15: The best chocolate sauce happens to be vegan
The culinary equivalent of a little black dress
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This is it: the perfect bitter chocolate sauce. It is rich, it is creamy, it is glossy — and it has not an ounce of dairy.
Today I get to share one of my mum’s recipes: a recipe that contributed to the immense popularity of her profiteroles on the dinner party circuit.
The genius of this chocolate sauce over a standard chocolate sauce is that it does away with the double cream and lets the deep, sultry flavours of the dark chocolate shine.
This is not about avoiding dairy for the sake of it — although this recipe will come in handy if you are vegan (or cooking for someone who is) — it’s about flavour.
Everyone needs a good chocolate sauce recipe in their arsenal — to serve over ice cream, or profiteroles, or a poached pear. And now that the time has come to pass this recipe onto you, I feel confident that it will serve the same purpose as the little black dress in your cupboard (sorry gents): a staple, versatile recipe that delivers every time (and is no less sexy for it).
Love,
Alexina
Coming up on Small Wins — The delicious and nutritious 20-minute meal that I make every week. Two things you must do with blood oranges. The forgotten pancake.
For my Small Wins+ community — This month I published a 101 on cooking vegetarian food and next month, in honour of V-Day, I’ll be sharing two gorgeous menus to cook on date night: a cosy one for winter and a flirty one for summer.
THE MERITS + DRAWBACKS OF DAIRY
Dairy is fabulous, don’t get me wrong. Butter, cream, crème fraîche, ricotta, mascarpone… I am here for all of it. But it’s useful to understand what part dairy plays in a dish.
Dairy is a compelling combination of fat, sugar and protein, and each component contributes something:
The fat acts as a carrier of flavour and plays a part in creating that satisfying, luscious mouthfeel
The sugar similarly enhances flavour and adds substance
The protein provides structure and stability — but it also does something a little different: it binds to available aroma molecules, making fewer available to our olfactory system (our sense of smell, which plays a dominant role in our ability to taste food)
If you’re thinking “hang on a sec, it sounds like the protein cancels out the flavour-enhancing effects of the fat and the sugar here?!” you’d be right — it does sound like that. But in reality they make a useful team.
Let’s consider a cup of coffee.
When you add cow’s milk to black coffee, the astringency and bitterness is mellowed out, but the richness of the coffee flavour still comes through, right?
This is because whilst the fat and sugar come together to boost the flavour of that strong, aromatic coffee, the protein simultaneously helps to soften it around the edges. This makes dairy an effective way of balancing out strong, bold flavours in your cooking.
Still, it’s worth being aware that there’s a tipping point when it comes to fat content in a dish.
Because although fat is a great carrier of flavour, it is not, in and of itself, hugely flavourful — and it can be unpleasant in isolation. If you were to eat a teaspoon of lard, for example, it wouldn’t exactly set your tastebuds alight and I doubt you’d enjoy it. For this reason, the balance of fat to other elements in a recipe matters: you don’t want the fat content to get too high.
Coffee and chocolate have a number of things in common — namely, a bitter complex flavour profile and widespread popularity — but unlike coffee, dark chocolate already contains fat. Almost 50%, actually, in the form of cocoa butter. So my question is: do we always need to add even more fat in the form of double cream?
I think the chocolate sauce recipe below proves that you don’t — it proves that you can still achieve a rich, creamy chocolate sauce without the dairy. And without that additional fat, the complex, deep flavour of the chocolate shines even brighter.
MUM’S BITTER CHOCOLATE SAUCE
I have made a couple of tweaks to my mum’s recipe, adding in some cocoa for added depth, swapping out the caster sugar for light muscovado (though you can use either) and adding a touch of salt. An optional pinch of ground cardamom works well too.
I find this tastes even better a day or two after it’s made as the flavours meld and mellow into each other.
Makes around 400ml
Ingredients
120g dark chocolate min 70%, finely chopped — the better the flavour of your chocolate, the better your sauce will be (see further notes at the bottom for my recommendations on which chocolate)
30g cocoa powder
60g light muscovado sugar (or caster sugar)
140ml water
Pinch of flaky sea salt, or to taste
Pinch of ground cardamom (optional) — this adds additional depth of flavour
Method
Add all the ingredients to a small saucepan and heat gently until dissolved. Cook the sauce until it reaches your desired thickness, around 2 to 3 minutes, then serve immediately (or store in the fridge).
Make ahead: Can be made up to 5 days in advance and stored, covered, in the fridge. It will turn solid in the fridge so will need to be rewarmed before serving. If the texture is too thick once re-warmed, add a little boiled water, a bit at a time, until you have the desired consistency.
FURTHER READING + RESOURCES
Other recipes that prove that chocolate and water are delicious together: David Leibovitz’s fantastic Dark Chocolate Sorbet and Herve This’ 1-ingredient Chocolate Mousse.
Since we’re on the topic of no cream, if you’re wanting to make plant-based bakes and desserts at home, look no further than Harrods’ Executive Pastry Chef Phil Khoury’s brilliant cookbook A New Way to Bake.
The best chocolate brands!
My favourite good-value, supermarket-available chocolate for cooking with is Meunier. I particularly love their white chocolate: it’s much nicer than own-brand white cooking chocolates, but also works better than Green & Blacks in baked goods (and is less expensive).
My favourite fancy chocolate for making desserts is Original Beans — it’s pricey AF, yes, but utterly delicious.
Where a recipe calls for white chocolate, if you want something with a little more complexity of flavour and caramel notes, then Valrhona’s Dulcey chocolate is gorgeous.
For snacking I have become obsessed with Hu’s Salty Dark Chocolate.
Hot chocolate fan? In case you missed it, check out this small win about Saint Lucian Cocoa Tea:
This sounds wonderful. What kind of cocoa, alkalized or not? Is there a brand you like best?
I add a spoon of expresso coffee to mine