HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO ME!

Today is my one year anniversary doing this blog. I am saying Happy Blog-a-versary to myself. I really didn't think I would keep doing this for a whole year. I hope I can continue and do even better in the future. I have tons of recipes just waiting for me to try out and blog about. I have been SO busy between tax season, my husband's travels, car breaking down, heat pumps getting replaced, running D back and forth to sports and so on!

I'll be back as soon as I can with more awesome food. Stay tuned!

Chocolate Syrup Recipe

I am sure you are feeling bombarded with the food police telling you what is good or bad to eat. But here we go again. I recently read that high fructose corn syrup in certain food items was found to contain high levels of mercury. I did some reading and found out how that happened but I am not a scientist so I'll let you do your own research on that. Unfortunately, several of my favorites products were found to contain high levels of mercury. Another good reason to avoid products that contain high fructose corn syrup. Hershey's Chocolate Syrup, which I buy regularly, was one of the products with the highest level of mercury. We all know that no amount of mercury is healthy. I know that people can get mercury poisoning from eating certain types of fish but I NEVER thought that there would be high levels of mercury in something like chocolate syrup. I was extremely upset and disappointed that I never heard anything from Hershey about removing the mercury from their product. There are lots of other products on the list but we only use a few of them at our house. One of the others that I had in my refrigerator was the Jack Daniels Barbecue Sauce. I was extremely disappointed about that too. I found out that Jim Beam also makes a barbecue sauce that doesn't contain HFCS. I have to try to find the Jim Beam barbecue sauce or just make my own as I have already done many times. But I NEVER made chocolate syrup like Hershey's before. Tonight, D asked me if we could make chocolate syrup. I looked at him a bit funny but when I did a little "googling" I found a recipe for an imitation syrup similar to Hershey's. We just made a 2 cup batch and D is excited to try it as soon as it cools. Here is the recipe for you to try. If you want to change the serving size go to http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/517/Hersheys_Chocolate_Syrup35400.shtml and plug in the amount you want to make. I imagine that this syrup lasts for a while in the refrigerator. If you don't want to go to the extreme of making your own chocolate syrup, you can buy Nestle's Nesquik Syrup which doesn't contain HFCS but their Nesquik Chocolate Milk does contain HFDS! Yes, it is extremely confusing and that is why I made my own.


Chocolate Syrup

Makes: 2 cups

Ingredients:

1/2 cup Hershey's Cocoa Powder
1 cup Sugar
1 cup water
1 teaspoon Vanilla
dash of salt

Directions:

Combine cocoa, sugar, and salt in a saucepan. Add water, and mix until smooth. Bring this mixture to a boil. Allow it to boil for one minute, be carefull this does not over boil. Remove from heat, when this cools add the vanilla.

This recipe from CDKitchen for Chocolate Syrup makes 2 cups.

Recipe ID: 16910


Enjoy!

The Creative Cook