This easy-to-prepare, super-shiny and terribly trendy chocolate drip makes your keto cakes look stunning! Read on to find out how to create the perfect keto-friendly chocolate drip.
Tips for making the 2-Ingredient Dark Chocolate Drip
Yes, this chocolate drip calls for only two ingredients. And no, there is no cream involved. I’ve often seen 2-ingredient chocolate drip recipes that use chocolate and cream. But that combo, my friend, is ganache, which is not suitable for a chocolate drip. Why? Ganache, while delicious, makes your cake look dull and lustreless, not glossy and shiny like this chocolate drip here.
Moreover, the consistency of ganache is difficult to get right if you’re using it to make a chocolate drip. Chances are that it will be too stiff — and that means it’s impossible to make a beautiful drip. Instead, you’ll end up with lumpy mounds of chocolate all over your cake. Maybe that look could be considered “artistic,” but if you ask me, it’s far from beautiful.
This recipe, however, produces a gloriously shiny chocolate drip that is easy to add on your cake. It makes a glossy, even layer. The secret to that glossy shine is — you guessed it — butter. Butter is the not-so-secret secret to making any sauce or condiment shiny, and it works perfectly in this chocolate drip.
So, let’s see how to make (and use!) this 2-ingredient dark chocolate drip.
First, take a saucepan. Add the chopped dark chocolate…
…and the butter.
Let it melt over a VERY low heat, constantly mixing. A double boiler is a safer method for melting chocolate; it’s much less likely to burn that way. You can also use a microwave oven to melt the mixture (be sure to place it in a microwave-safe dish).
Remember to stir all the time and control the heat.
Look how glossy it is! You won’t get this luscious lustre with cream-based ganache.
Let the chocolate and butter mixture cool until lukewarm. (If it’s too warm, it will melt the frosting on your cake, creating a big mess.) So, this chocolate mixture is now at 86 °F (30 °C)—the perfect temperature for topping your cake.
Next, take your chilled and frosted keto cake. Here I have this keto angel food cake, filled and frosted with this sugar-free vanilla frosting. Be sure your cake is chilled: this ensures that the chocolate drip will set quickly. If your cake is not chilled, the chocolate drip may make your cake look messy, because it might melt the frosting and mix with it.
So, in an ideal world, your cake will be chilled and your chocolate mixture for the chocolate drip will be lukewarm, almost at room temperature. In the past, I’ve frosted my cakes the day before, added the drip, and then returned them to the fridge. However, you don’t need to chill the cake overnight: a couple of hours will do. Oh yes, if you have a cake turntable, use it: it makes adding the drip very easy.
Now, here’s method 1 for adding the chocolate drip to the cake (it’s my preferred method because it’s so fast, though it’s a tad more difficult than method 2):
Spoon some chocolate mixture onto the center of the cake.
Spread the chocolate mixture carefully with the back of the spoon until it reaches the edges of the cake.
With the side of the spoon, pull a little bit of the chocolate mixture over the edge so that it creates a nice drip down the side of the cake.
Like this.
Continue doing this until you’ve got a beautiful drip evenly around all sides of the cake.
And now, method 2 (where you “drip” the sides before adding the chocolate glaze onto the center of the cake): Fill a squeeze bottle with the lukewarm chocolate mixture. You can also use a spoon, but a squeeze bottle makes the job much easier.
Start adding the drips one by one so that they run down the sides of your cake.
Continue until you’ve got nice drips all around the cake.
Then, pour some chocolate mixture onto the center of the cake and spread it carefully until it reaches the drips.
Whichever method you use to make your drips, you’ll now need to place the cake in the fridge so that the chocolate drip sets.
The drip makes a perfect decoration as such, but naturally you can add further decorations if you wish. (It’s always super-fun to decorate a cake!)
My keto chocolate drip experiments
If you have been following me for awhile, you know that lately I’ve been obsessed with keto chocolate drip cakes. For Easter, I created this crazy chocolate drip cake with homemade sugar-free chocolate eggs:
And for my hubby’s birthday, I created this one with strawberries:
I also made some keto chocolate drip cakes which I didn’t manage to photograph. How did I develop this mania? Well, my keto chocolate drip cake craze started when I realized that the web was suddenly jam-packed with photos of chocolate drip cakes. I got intrigued and started exploring. The cakes were all regular sugary, wheaty cakes, but I was so fascinated by the idea of the chocolate drip that I wanted to find a way to make a keto version of it.
I often make keto cakes — just because baking cakes and decorating them is so fun! So I thought a keto chocolate drip would be a great addition to my repertoire of decorations. After doing some research, I wanted to experiment with chocolate drip using very dark chocolate and butter. I saw many recipes using chocolate and cream – that is, ganache – but as a chocolate drip, it looked dull and lifeless. I wanted more glory!
So, I conducted some experiments with 85 % dark chocolate and butter. Soon, I realized that using 3 parts chocolate and a bit more than 2 parts butter produced the best consistency: the drip was neither too runny nor too stiff. For a larger cake (my two-tiered Easter cake) I used 5.3 oz (150 g) chocolate and 3.5 oz (100 g) butter. However, that was far too much: there were lots of leftovers in the saucepan. (I have to confess that I ate the buttery chocolate mixture just like that, scooping it straight from the saucepan with a spoon!)
I learned to make a smaller amount of the chocolate-butter mixture. I usually make quite small cakes (6″ = 12.5 cm in diameter), so you really don’t need that much to create the chocolate drip. Anyway, the drip is just a thin layer, covering the top of the cake and a little bit of the sides.
I also made some experiments with 1 part chocolate and 1 part butter, but the mixture was slightly too runny – though there definitely was no lack of shine!
For this recipe, I’ve used 3 oz (85 g) chocolate and 2.5 oz (70 g) butter. It makes a beautiful drip for an 8″ (20 cm) cake. (If you’re lucky, there’ll be some leftovers to enjoy, too!)
Without further ado, here’s the recipe:
- 3 oz = 85 g dark chocolate (cocoa content minimum 85%), chopped
- 2.5 oz = 70 g grass-fed unsalted butter, cubed
- Place the chocolate and butter into a small saucepan. Melt extremely carefully over a very low heat, constantly mixing. Don't let it burn! You can also use a double boiler or microwave oven for melting the mixture.
- Let cool until lukewarm, almost at room temperature, but still runny.
- Take a chilled, frosted cake and use your preferred method (see the video or the progress photos for two different methods) to add the chocolate drip onto the cake.
- Place the cake in the fridge at least for an hour so that the chocolate drip hardens.
- Add further decorations, or just serve as is.
| Nutrition Information (with 85% chocolate) | In total | Per tablespoon |
| Protein | 10.2 g | 1.0 g |
| Fat | 99.5 g | 9.9 g |
| Net carbs | 17.9 g | 1.8 g |
| kcal | 1023 kcal | 102 kcal |
Tips for variation
You can add flavorings that match your cake to the chocolate drip. For example, I added a drop of pure peppermint oil to this chocolate drip for my mint chocolate cake. (By the way, the bluish-greenish color is spirulina-based: no need to use toxic food colorings when you can get natural ones!)
You can also add a drop or two of 100% orange essential oil to the drip mixture, or perhaps some instant coffee granules to make a delicious mocha drip.
If you prefer your chocolate drip sweeter, you can sweeten it with liquid stevia. Experiment with different stevia flavors, like (always foolproof!) vanilla stevia or dark chocolate stevia, or more exciting versions like blueberry pomegranate stevia or chai spice stevia. When fall rolls around, don’t forget to try pumpkin spice stevia!
Have fun with the chocolate drip!
Hello there. Thank you for this info. I have been struggling with drips and had wondered if butter might work better than cream so it’s fab to get that confirmed!
Have you got any idea what would work best for a white chocolate drip please? Thanks so much for your help
Hi Mandy, great to hear you found my recipe helpful! I would use cocoa butter for white chocolate drip, and most likely add some cream to make it thicker as the combination of butter and cocoa butter is admittedly pretty runny. Thanks for the hint, I became intrigued and I certainly should develop a white chocolate drip!