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It's the time of year for backyard BBQs, watermelon and ice cream. Lots and lots of ice cream! I just can't resist a good ice cream sundae with a high quality hot fudge sauce. And to scratch my own itch for such a hot chocolate sauce, I designed a decadent hot fudge sauce using honey as a base.

Using a local honey instead of the more typical corn syrup base gives this fudge sauce a richer and less saccharine sweetness. It also gives the chocolate sauce a thicker texture which means it won't immediately pool at the bottom of your bowl (unless of course, you heat it to temperatures similar to Dante's sixth level of hell).

Another reason this hot fudge sauce is so rich is that we use both cocoa powder and real chocolate. Many quick recipes call for cocoa powder only which produces a less full-flavored chocolate-y profile. Our mixture of cocoa powder and French dark chocolate five the sauce a deep, rich chocolate taste.

The last crucial quality concern for me was how the sauce would react once poured on ice cream. My biggest pet peeve with many high-end chocolate sauces is that they often turn into a hard shell on the ice cream. Our blend of honey, fresh cream and butter make sure that this sauce stays somewhat fluid and flexible once poured on the cold ice cream.

A few of our early taste-testers (you'd be surprised how many people volunteer to help out a chocolatier when it comes to tasting new products!), have found other users for this hot fudge sauce:

• to make decadent mochas
• as a garnishment or finishing touches on plated desserts
• as a topping for waffles and crepes
• to make a delicious chocolate martini
• one person suggested eating by the spoonful straight out of the jar, but I can't recommend that in good conscious since it's not calorie free lol

Our sauce comes in a glass jar so you don't have to worry about popping it into the microwave. And it generally takes between 10 and 20 seconds to heat it up just perfectly! Keep this product refrigerated as there is fresh cream and butter. Lasts for about 30 days.

Buy it in our shop or online here.

At Sugar Love these past few winters, we kept getting requests for hot chocolate mixes but what I really wanted to provide is a drinking chocolate product, sometimes called a sipping chocolate. This rich and luxurious drink is perfect for chilly mornings and a little bit goes a long way.

So what's the difference between the popular hot chocolate and the traditional drinking chocolate? Cocoa butter!

Cocoa butter is the fat that gets pressed out of the chocolate beans after roasting. The dry cake that is left is pulverized to get cocoa powder which is the main ingredient in hot chocolate mixes (or at least should be!). Drinking chocolate uses the whole chocolate product and so cocoa solids (called liquor even though there is no alcohol present) are in a balance with sugar, cocoa butter and often vanilla. This creates a thick, full taste of chocolate with each sip.

Because of how rich the drinking chocolate is, we really recommend a serving between two and four ounces. 

Fun fact! Drinking chocolate locations used to be more popular in Paris than coffee houses, at about a dozen to one. Then the French revolution began and those darn revolutionaries said that drinking chocolate was for the upper class, the lazy (which wasn't true! All classes around the world partook of drinking chocolate most mornings!). And they recommended drinking coffee as an alternative.

And so while the French gave (and continue to give) some of the best chocolate and confections in the world, they are the main reason we don't start our mornings with chocolate! C'est tant pis!