Hot Fudge Sauce {vegan}

Intending to make Pizookies topped with vanilla ice cream for dessert for a dinner party, I decided I needed some hot fudge sauce to top it all off, but I didn’t have time to go to the store to buy some nor did I want to spend the money.

So I did some research and realized there was no possible way I could make a hot fudge sauce with the ingredients I had on hand unless I made it vegan. I had neither evaporated milk in my cupboard nor heavy cream in my fridge. I did, however, have two more cans of coconut milk even after making creamy vegan ice cream, and I easily found several vegan hot fudge sauce recipes that used coconut milk. I decided to follow the recipe I found at Flippin’ Delicious because I had all of the ingredients on hand.

Even though I had just successfully used coconut milk to make some delicious creamy vegan ice cream, I was nervous about this hot fudge recipe. Would the coconut flavor shine through the chocolate? (It didn’t seem likely because it didn’t shine through the vanilla in the ice cream.) Would my non-vegan dinner guests recognize the hot fudge sauce as vegan and find it inferior? Would it taste too healthy?

All of my concerns ended up being unfounded when we dipped our spoons into that first bit of fudge sauce. I could detect no health or coconut taste in the fudge sauce — just plenty of cocoa. My dinner guests hungrily licked their spoons exclaiming about how good the fudge tasted. For a brief moment they looked trepidatious when I asked them if they wanted to know a secret about the hot fudge sauce. I’m not sure what they thought I was going to say (I made it with chocolate covered crickets?) but when I announced that the sauce was vegan it didn’t faze them. Not even my pickiest dinner guest batted an eyelash in my direction!

While this sauce doesn’t get quite as thick as the dairy stuff you buy from the local grocery store, it does thicken to a (warm) fudge-like consistency at room temperature. If you heat it up, it will thin out so I like to serve it room temperature. This is seriously sooooo easy to make and so much cheaper than buying expensive hot fudge. Bonus, if you’re looking for something to do with those cans of coconut milk sitting in the back of your cupboard, this recipe will help with that. You can make about three servings of this sauce with one can!

ingredients.

½ c. vegan butter
1 ½ c. powdered sugar
4 to 6 T. dutch process cocoa (I used Rodelle Gourmet Baking Cocoa)
½ c. full fat canned coconut milk (I used Faraon brand coconut milk)
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
2 pinches of salt

directions.

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the powdered sugar and cocoa and stir until incorporated.
Add the coconut milk, vanilla extract, and salt and stir until smooth. Bring to a simmer, and cook for 2 to 3 minutes.
Remove from heat, and serve warm.

Recipe rating: 