Sugar-Free Hot Fudge Sauce

Now, how does this sound: rich, dark, creamy and chocolatey hot fudge sauce, ready to comfort your mind and nourish your body, without any rush in your blood sugar levels or guilty feelings? — I knew! I already see the drool creeping out of the corner of your mouth. But I don’t want to torture you more, here is the recipe, I’m sure it satisfies you!

Tips for making the Sugar-Free Hot Fudge Sauce

This is very quick, simple and easy sauce to make. The most important thing is to NOT let the sauce boil. If it boils, it will taste burned. The sauce can develop a couple of bubbles at maximum, but absolutely not more.

In general, cocoa powder shouldn’t be boiled in any sauce. So, if you need to boil whatever cocoa powder containing sauce to thicken it — for example if you are using egg yolks — you should first cook the sauce and then add the cocoa powder. Otherwise you end up with burned chocolate and then there is no other choice than to throw the sauce to the garbage can.

This hot fudge sauce is rather on the thin side, but you can thicken it by heating the ingredients slowly, so that the sauce thickens a bit. Just don’t let it boil.

You can melt the butter beforehand, but I thought it’s not necessary. The butter melts anyway when the mixture gets hot. Why to make things more complicated than needed?

If you cannot find powdered erythritol, you can grind erythritol crystals for example in a blender or in Magic Bullet until they are powdered. Actually, I seldom buy powdered erythritol or Swerve nowadays, I like to powder my own erythritol. It takes just half a minute with a high-speed blender!

But let’s see how to make this simple and delicious sauce:

Take a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Pour in the cream…

…sweetener…

…butter…

…vanilla extract…

…and the cocoa powder.

Mix well and start heating over low heat. By the way, a wire whisk is a perfect piece of equipment for mixing this sauce. Well, it’s sort of a piece of equipment, isn’t it?

Mix all the time, until the mixture is hot but not boiling.

Getting there…

…ready!

Sugar-Free Hot Fudge Sauce

1 cup = 240 ml heavy cream
1/2 cup = 120 ml Confectioner’s Style Swerve or powdered erythritol
2 tablespoons = 1 oz = 30 g salted organic grass-fed butter
1/2 teaspoon organic vanilla extract
1/2 cup = 120 ml unsweetened organic dark cocoa powder

Directions

Place all ingredients in a heavy-bottomed saucepan.
Heat over low heat, mixing all the time, until the mixture is hot but not boiling. It’s important to not let the sauce boil.
Serve immediately.
Store the possible leftovers in the fridge and heat gently before serving.

Nutrition information	Protein	Fat	Net carbs	kcal
In total:	15.3 g	111.6 g	16.4 g	1149 kcal
Per 1/4 cup (60 ml):	2.2 g	15.9 g	2.3 g	164 kcal
Per tablespoon:	0.6 g	4.1 g	0.6 g	43 kcal

My Sugar-Free Hot Fudge Sauce experiments

As always, I wanted the sauce to be as simple as possible and very easy to prepare. Instead of expensive dark chocolate, which also requires melting before applying it, I decided to use dark cocoa powder and butter — a perfect and affordable combination to replace dark chocolate.

Moreover, as I’m a really lazy cook, I just could place all ingredients in a saucepan and heat the mixture until it forms a thick, rich and smooth hot fudge sauce! Now, what could be easier?

The ingredients were quite clear from the very beginning, just the amounts needed adjusting and fine-tuning.

First I used erythritol crystals which dissolved nicely while heating the sauce, but they crystallized back when the sauce cooled down a bit — a fact which I have faced numerous times before. Will I ever learn… So, I decided to switch to powdered erythritol which doesn’t form any crystals when cooling. Guaranteed. Unless the stuff is of poor quality.

Moreover, I used far too much erythritol crystals in the beginning. With 2/3 cup (160 ml) erythritol crystals the sauce was intolerably sweet. 1/2 cup (120 ml) of powdered erythritol was enough for my taste buds.

By the way, powdered erythritol is also lighter in weight. When 1/2 cup (120 ml) erythritol crystals weigh some 3.5 oz (100 g), the same amount of powdered erythritol weighs just a bit over 2 oz (65 g). There might be some variances between the brands and also between different batches, so it’s always a safe option to go with volume rather than with weight. At least that’s what I have noticed.

I also used too little cocoa powder in the beginning. In my first experiment I had just three tablespoons, which didn’t give rich enough chocolate flavor. After increasing the amount to a whopping 1/2 cup (120 ml), I was finally satisfied.

Tips for variation

This sauce is not very sweet (again, I’m trying to wean you off from too sweet flavors!), however if your sweet tooth requires more sweetness, you can add for example liquid stevia or this wonderful vanilla stevia to the ready sauce. Anyway, it’s a good idea to mix different sweeteners to get maximum sweetness with minimum aftertaste.

You can spice up the sauce with rum, cinnamon, freshly ground cardamom, freshly grated orange peel or different flavorings.

In addition to pouring the sauce over your low-carb delicacies, you can use this treat as dip or make it a chocolate fondue!

And, nothing prevents you from using this sauce cold, after refrigerating it. It actually gets quite thick in the fridge, so you can use it as Nutella-type spread or frosting. Pure yum!

I made a layered cake from Gluten-Free Low-Carb Crepes and this sauce last week when my husband had his birthday. We all liked the cake very much!

This is not a very good photo, I just took it quickly with my smartphone so it’s completely without any fancy post-editing.