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Hot Fudge Chocolate Sauce
1 cup sugar 1/2 cup water 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 1 square chocolate 1 tablespoon butter Mix together the sugar, water and grated chocolate. Boil for five minutes. Cool slightly and add the butter and vanilla.
A three-minute sauce whose only variable is how long it boils. Five minutes at a rolling boil takes the syrup close to the thread-to-soft-ball range, which is what gives the sauce its characteristic thickening and slight chew over cold ice cream.
- "1 square chocolate"This means one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate, the standard wrapped square of the period. Bittersweet or semisweet will work but the sauce will be noticeably sweeter and thinner; reduce the sugar to about 3/4 cup if you substitute.
- GratingGrating was called for because solid squares dissolve slowly. Chopping fine, or simply letting the square melt in the water over low heat before the sugar goes in, achieves the same thing without the mess.
- The five minutes matterTime from the moment the surface is at a full boil, not from when the pan goes on the heat. Under-boiled it stays watery; much past five minutes it will set hard on contact with ice cream.
- Stirring and scorchingUse a heavy saucepan and stir until the sugar has dissolved, then leave it alone. Cocoa solids settle and catch easily on thin metal.
- Adding the butterLet the syrup stand two or three minutes off the heat before the butter and vanilla go in. Butter beaten into boiling syrup can separate, and vanilla loses aroma at that temperature.
- Yield and servingAbout 3/4 cup, enough for four to six sundaes. Serve warm; it thickens as it cools.
- KeepingRefrigerates well for a week or two in a covered jar. It sets firm when cold and needs gentle reheating, with a teaspoon of hot water stirred in if it has gone stiff.
Hot fudge belongs to the American soda fountain rather than the confectioner's shop: it is essentially fudge candy stopped partway, boiled just long enough to thicken but not long enough to crystallize into a cuttable slab. Soda fountains were serving hot chocolate sauce over ice cream by the early twentieth century, and by the time this book appeared the combination was familiar enough that a general-purpose household collection could give it in five lines with no explanation.