Another store-bought for homemade swap: Chocolate Syrup

We ran out of Hershey's Chocolate Syrup today. Almost a crisis. The kids don't seem to be feeling very well today and keep asking for chocolate milk.

I've been staring down the list of ingredients on the Hershey's bottle for quite some time now. Willing it to say sugar instead of High Fructose Corn Syrup. (HFCS) Believe what you want about HFCS, but I personally have read enough to be in the "it's not good for you" camp. I try to eliminate it from our diets as much as I can. (This is partly why we don't regularly drink pop. We get our "fizzy" fix from seltzer.)

So on a whim, to avoid a chocolate milk crisis, I whipped up a batch of homemade chocolate syrup.

I adapted my recipe from this one:

After reading a couple of recipes and the comments on those recipes, I learned that chocolate syrup really needs milk in it, so I did half water, half milk. I also saved the Hershey's bottle and put my syrup in it, just for ease of storing & pouring.


Homemade Chocolate Syrup


1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk (I used 2%)
2 cups sugar
dash salt
3 Tbsp. baking cocoa (I used hershey's powder)
1 tsp. Vanilla

Whisk water, milk, sugar, salt, & baking cocoa in a sauce pan over medium heat until boiling. Set timer & boil 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Add vanilla. Cool completely. It will thicken as it cools. 


I'll post a picture as soon as I can.