Hot Fudge Sauce

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You only need five major ingredients and less than 10 minutes to make your own rich and thick hot fudge sauce at home. Use as an ice cream topping, on top of your favorite baked goods, or to make chocolate milk or hot chocolate!

When it comes to ice cream, I am an ALL IN type of gal. I want chunks, I want toppings, I want everything.

That includes all the sauces, cherries, sprinkles, nuts… Don’t hold back when it comes to my ice cream!

When I think about a solid ice cream sundae, I immediately think of hot fudge sauce. That contrast of cold, smooth ice cream with gooey, drippy chocolate sauce is everything this texture lover wants in a bite of ice cream.

I mean, it’s no surprise that some of the ice cream recipes that exist on my site are peanut butter ripple, birthday cake, praline, and peach. There are chunks in all of them, plenty of room for added goodies, and each spoonful has something to look forward to.

Once I learned that homemade fudge sauce is actually really simple to make, I had to try it myself, and I’ll never go back to the jarred stuff.

It’s SO smooth, it’s so creamy, and it’s full of rich chocolate flavor that just can’t be matched in a jar.

Not here! My hot fudge sauce ingredients are simple, and it’s highly likely you have them all in your kitchen right now.

For this hot fudge, you’ll need heavy cream, unsalted butter, brown sugar, salt, bittersweet chocolate, and cocoa powder.

The type of cocoa powder is totally up to you. You can use natural unsweetened, special dark, or Dutch processed. I always have all 3 on hand (baker problems!), but usually reach for Dutch processed in something like this.

It’s smoother in taste than the other two options, but if all you have is traditional/regular/basic unsweetened cocoa powder, don’t feel like you need to make a special trip to the store. It’ll still be top notch!

While we do do some crazy things around here sometimes like cook sugar for salted caramel sauce, we also do some really basic things like melt ingredients in a saucepan and stir it all together.

And the latter is true in this recipe for hot fudge!

You’ll start by mixing and heating the heavy cream, butter, brown sugar, and salt. The mixture will be light brown and smooth once it’s completely melted, and you’ll cook this portion for only 1 minute.

After that’s been properly heated, you’ll add the chopped chocolate.

I go with bittersweet chocolate here because we’re bringing all of the sweetness with moist brown sugar. Bittersweet chocolate has a very low moisture content, so we can accommodate the additional moisture from the brown sugar by selecting bittersweet.

We also insure we’re preserving that quality chocolate flavor and balancing it with the sweetness, since we’re probably putting our homemade hot fudge on top of already-sweet ice cream.

And all those other toppings we love, remember.

Whisk all that chocolate in until it’s completely melted and the mixture is nice and smooth.

Lastly, you’ll add in the cocoa powder. This will help thicken the mixture a bit so it’s a little less like chocolate sauce and more like thick, fudgy chocolate instead.

As you whisk it in, it will start to make small clumps. Just keep whisking, semi-vigorously, while keeping it over heat to cook it for an additional minute.

Once all of the cocoa powder is incorporated, remove it from the heat. You can whisk the mixture some more if there are any additional lumps remaining, but at this point, your hot fudge sauce recipe is largely complete!

You can use your chocolate fudge sauce right away or you can let it cool and jar it up for later. It will keep in the refrigerator for about a month, but remember there are no preservatives, so you’ll have to keep an eye on it.

You can also freeze your hot fudge sauce for up to 3 months.

See? Isn’t that super easy?