4pm Chocolate Sauce

and the truth behind the making of this sauce

Aug 05, 2023

On that day, June 2008, Luke was perched on the counter, probably bribed with a black marker to keep him busy while I scratched “Mom’s Chocolate Sauce” on the other side of the page, phone wedged between my ear and shoulder. Luke was four, Charlie would have been two. It was probably 4 pm, the time of day when I wanted to nap but had to push through until bedtime, so I’d make something sweet to help bridge the gap. I would have helped myself to a big spoonful of sauce while making it, or maybe I stirred it into a coffee I would regret later that night. Then there would be chocolate sundaes after dinner, served in mugs. Not everyday fare, but essential on those particularly long days with toddlers.

We used to make this chocolate sauce as kids in our pine kitchen with the burgundy wallpaper. One sister could finish a batch while another sister washed the dishes. It takes like our childhood. My mom can’t remember where the recipe came from. Maybe her Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, or it might have been a recipe from my father’s mother, Gran? I wonder if Gran made this sauce in her Truro kitchen, standing at the stove beside the white enamel sink, whisking sugar into melted chocolate and butter? Was my dad at her feet, or his brother Angus or little sister Jeannie? I can’t see her sampling the sauce from the pot like I do, I can’t imagine her needing a nap. I’ve written about how my Gran dressed like Jessica Fletcher - brooch at the neck, pantyhose, perhaps a long sweater belted tightly at the waist. She was a nurse, her kitchen was spotless. There was no double dipping with spoons. But she made this sauce, we think, and now, here I am, whisking sugar into melted chocolate and butter, and adding milk from a can.1

I never use milk from a can, except when making this sauce. The strange action of pouring milk through a perforated triangular metal hole pulls my body into the shape of my Gran and my mother. It’s funny how a physical action can inform how you feel, how you behave. Like the time I had my hair sculpted into a French twist and lips and nails painted red for a Mad Men cocktail party. The weight of my head and formality of my nails and matte red mouth slowed down the action of eating appetizers. I was more careful, more elegant. Now I am using a can opener to punch two holes in the top of a can of evaporated milk and I pour it slowly into the thick chocolate mixture. Some call this metal can opener a church key. I see church teas and cupboards filled with canned milk. I see my mother, punching holes into her tins when we were small. I see the linoleum floor, the swinging kitchen door, I feel the heat outside our Mississippi kitchen and my mother’s afternoon fatigue. I am them.

I mentioned this recipe in the latest episode of The Food Podcast - the child at my hip, the drawing, the scratched recipe. Then I suggested that when we write a recipe, even if it’s just a scratchy mess, why not also jot down a few words to capture the day as well? That way personal narrative is folded into the ingredients when a recipe is passed along. So in full transparency, while making this sauce at my mother-in-law’s stove, the basement shower drain backs up and dirty water runs across the basement floor. A blockage is found in the sewage pipe in the garden. Plumbers dig. I do not double dip with my spoon. I wash the dirty dishes outside with water boiled on the stove. My hair is a mess. I jump in the ocean.

The plumbers are still here, two days later. But look, I have chocolate sauce, and tonight we’ll have sundaes.

Chocolate Sauce

1/2 cup (113g) butter

2 squares of unsweetened baking chocolate (2 ounces / 57g)

1 1/2 cups (300g - I know, it’s a lot…) white sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt (or a good pinch of flaky sea salt)

1 cup (250ml) 2 % Carnation evaporated milk

splash of vanilla

In a saucepan melt butter and chocolate over low heat until smooth. Add sugar and salt, slowly in five additions, stirring well after each addition. Mixture will be very thick. Slowly add milk, whisking until smooth, then allow to cook for 5 minutes, until slightly thicker. Add vanilla. Store in the fridge and warm gently when serving.

Listen to The Food Podcast Here

Known most commonly by its brand name ‘Carnation,’ evaporated milk is sold in 354ml cans and is made by evaporating all the water from the milk, leaving a creamier milk behind. And that can will last forever, ready whenever you need chocolate sauce. Use the rest of the can in your coffee, as they do in Newfoundland. I found this poem online, written by an anonymous Newfoundlander, in praise of Carnation milk. The line ‘wonderful grand’ might be a nod to the Newfoundland band of the same name? Someone, chime in!