chocolate sauce

I thought about not posting this, because it's the easiest recipe ever (so easy it's not even really a recipe) and everyone probably already knows how to make it. But then I thought there could be the off chance that someone would stumble upon this having forever wished to be able to make the perfect chocolate sauce but woefully never having found the right one, and I would be a hero! Well, to be fair, Ina Garten would be the hero...

I used to make chocolate sauce with a double-boiler, and it was a little bit annoying because of the mess from the steam and the extra dishes to wash, blah, blah, blah. Plus I'm lazy. So instead, I follow Ina's lead and throw a bunch of chocolate right into a sauce pan. No buffer! I'll pause as you gasp at my temerity.

Ina uses gourmet chocolate chunks that I think she chops herself, and I use store brand chocolate chips. I admit I'm not a chocolate snob, but if you have really demanding chocolate standards, by all means use the good stuff. If I can, I mix half milk chocolate chips and half semi-sweet chocolate chips. You could even go crazy and try out white chocolate or peanut butter or mint or butterscotch chips........

This is where my process fails to live up to the designation of a recipe. I rarely measure except when baking (hi, Dad!), so this is eyeballing from here on out. Once the chips are in the pan, I add a dash of skim milk and the same amount of half and half (you can do all skim here, but the half and half really does make it better; if you want to really do it well, use only half and half). The amount of dairy you add depends on how much chocolate you use, but you want the dairy to just cover the bottom of the pan so that only a little bit of the chocolate is submerged - it keeps the chocolate from burning. The good thing is that if you accidentally add too much, it's easily fixable - just add more chocolate.

So that's how you do it. Pan, chocolate, milk, medium heat. The chocolate will melt quickly, and once it starts, stir until everything is incorporated without any lumps. If the sauce is too thin to your liking, add more chocolate. If it's too thick, more milk. The thicker the sauce, the more likely it is to harden when it hits your ice cream (if that's where you're using it), and a thinner sauce will melt your ice cream. Ina adds a touch of brewed coffee to hers at the end, which I like too, but since I never have brewed coffee on hand, I add a (super small) splash of vanilla. Baileys would probably be awesome, too.

Once the sauce is smooth and shiny, you're done! It's great on ice cream, for dipping pretzels, or for eating straight out of the pan. Also, it's teenage boy approved (I keep a running list of those recipes), if that means anything to you; to me, it means it's either a) serious comfort food or b) serious junk food.