Bittersweet Chocolate Icing

Rose's original recipe: 3 cups whole milk
3 squares Bakers unsweetened (bitter) chocolate
1/2 cup sugar

Melt bitter chocolate and sugar in milk, stir constantly on stove top in an uncovered sauce pan(for about 30 minutes) until thickened.

To make it easier I quickly modified the directions to: Bring milk and sugar to boil in microwave in a heat proof glass bowl. Pour over chocolate in large non stick skillet and cook on stove top uncovered (for about 10 minutes) stirring constantly until thickened. It will bubble and splatter a lot, beware.

I prefer to use a heat proof rubber spatula to do the stirring. It lets me keep the bottom well stirred. Pampered Chef makes a good one that really doesn't distort its shape scraping the bottom of a pan of boiling milk for prolonged periods of time.

Then to make it low fat I modified the ingredients to 1 pint of fat free half and half instead of the whole milk. This made it even easier as it is already thicker to start with.

I plan to try it with Splenda instead of sugar next time to lower the calories.

I thought it was delicious in the above proportions but my husband is used to his mom's original version being less sweet. Although the fat free half & half cooks up fine texture wise it is inherently sweeter than plain whole milk. If you like your chocolate more like dark chocolate than like milk chocolate you may want to decrease the amount of sugar added.

This makes enough for a thin icing layer on a 2 layer cake.

We like it on hot milk cake, sometimes we cut the cake in half horizontally (use dental floss) and layer the cut pieces with vanilla pudding made slightly thicker than usual (1 box pudding mix and 1 3/4 cups milk instead of the usual 2 cups). I do it with skim milk but Rose used whole milk. The chocolate icing goes in the middle between the 2 layers and on the outside.

yummy!

The original recipe is very similar to a chocolate ganache but is not whipped and I believe both the original recipe and the low fat variation could be modified for many, if not all chocolate ganache uses; (truffles, mousses, icing, tarts, meringues).