It depends on what temperature you want to use it at. If you're going to use it warm, the extra fat in the cream will thin. Evaporated milk might work. Or you can certainly reduce the liquid and/or increase the dry.

Or you could try a recipe meant for how you want to use it. I say that because sometimes simple recipes are what they are because the emphasis is on easy rather than perfection. I'm currently tweaking an easy recipe to have more complex measures (requiring two measures for a couple of ingredients rather than one. Easier, but it could taste better.

The simplest chocolate sauce is just chocolate melted into cream. The more cream, the runnier the sauce. Or add in a little milk if it's too thick for you.

Any "hot chocolate sauce" will be thin....because heat melts the chocolate and the butter.

Use one of the thickeners. The easiest would be corn starch. First make a small slurry and don't do the whole batch. Maybe 1/4 of your sauce to test.

Tapioca would be a bit glossier. Prettier. And does not need so much heat to react.

I wonder if using powdered cream just hydrated enough that it will mix with the sugar. I used nut powder when i wanted a 'peanut butter cup' center for chocolate truffles. All recipes i found use powdered sugar until it gets thick but i did not want it so sick sweet.

Commercially produced products use xanthan gum as a thickener and stabilizer. It is in so many things like the shelf stable dressings that are odly thick, canned soups, shampoo, body lotions, gluten-free goods, etc. Super cheap and only a 1/2 tsp is needed for a pint jar. About 8-10 bucks a pound.

It really seems as if reducing the liquid would change leave it thicker. That sounds logical.

Chocolate is a funny thing and it can reaact to heat and liquid in some unexpected ways.

Who has not had their melted chocolate seize up after melting?

'When you make gonache (sp?) with cream and high cocoa percent chocolate it will remain soft for a good while.

One thing that occurs to me is to ask what percent of cocoa do you have in your chocolate. When I make goanche it requires a high percent of cocoa. That might make a difference in your chocolate sauce, maybe.

I would replace the cocoa powder with 2 oz of chocolate, and I also only use cream instead of milk in chocolate sauce. Reduce the butter by 1 Tbsp. I also omit the 1/4 tsp of salt - it is not necessary, and the chocolate tastes sweeter (to me) without it. Anyway, no salt in my chocolate sauce.

Reducing the liquid will make it thicker.

Here is the recipe I use:

3 oz. Bittersweet chocolate

1 tbsp unsalted butter

3 tbsp cream

1 tbsp sugar (or to taste)

I usually double this recipe, but this gives proportions that I like. You may also want more sugar.

Lars, this recipe was a little different from from many others I looked at, because it used BOTH unsweetened chocolate AND cocoa powder. The chocolate flavor was good, I just wanted it thicker when warmed up.

This is thick and like cooked fudge in consistency when taken from the refrigerator, then thin when warmed up (when the butter melts, I assume: there's a lot of butter in the recipe).

The chocolate sauce par excellence in my mind was from an ice cream parlor in my college days (Peacock's, Evanston IL). It was thick when they ladled it from the heated tub (you could watch everything being prepared up front, then you'd take your sundae to your table). Then it was thicker on the ice cream.

I remember that kind of hot fudge from my childhood, but unlike fudge candy, it has to have a thickener other than butter because butter melts at body tempersture,

So the first comment on this one says it's too thick! (So add some cream if so...) It uses the kind of cocoa powder I prefer, as well as some solid choclate. I make chocolate ice cream from fancy cocoa powder. Substitute Valrhona one for one in the same recipe, and it's like solid fudge. If you're not using a similar high fat cocoa powder, that might be the trick.

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/6094-hot-fudge-sauce

A lot of the thick looking ones use sweetened condensed milk.

Looks like I have to subscribe to NY Times to see that recipe.

Maybe someone with a subscription will be able to paraphrase it and post in for this thread?

At an ice cream parlor you will likelty get a chocolate sauce that is commercial and may use some of the wizardry of the food industry to get certain properties that you are unlikely to get at home in your kitchen.

I will wager to bet that your chocolate sauce that you make at home is of a better qualtiy than that. It may not be the same, probably better, really but it may behave differently.

You may be better advised to adjust your expectations rather than some other balance of ingredients.

I am going to suggest that the sauce that firms up or hardens on top of a pile of ice cream might be made with some sort of wax. There is some manner of this in chocolate that makes your box of chocolates shiney and creates a firm shell over the filling.

Sure there must be some chocolate experts here.

Chocolate can have surprising qualities.

The NYTimes recipe uses more cocoa and heavy cream (2 cups), not milk. 1/2 cup of the sugar amount is light brown sugar. And yes, one of the first comments asks how can they thin it down.....add milk or more cream.

The question was 'how to thicken' the recipe already made. Comparing the two recipes, it is more than double the cocoa in the Times recipe. (one and 1/4 cup)

A shame the Times has a paywall. It is the best for recipes.

Yes, lots more cocoa powder. As I said, re the original question, add more dry.

Linnea, NYT are supposed to give you several free visits per month. It's curated, which means they have salaries to pay, but their recipes are usually good, and the comments have been selected by the editors as on point, I had a free look at the recipe and noted it, so I've sent it in a Houzz message to you. i've never made it, so can't vouch for it, but as S said, a lot more cocoa powder, especially one of the kind that turns to fudge when moistened, is probably the answer.

I can't imaging a chocolate sauce "thickened" with flour or cornstarch like gravy! EWWW.

You want it thicker, cook the basic stuff longer before you add the solid chocolate.....then beat it....like fudge. But please don't add "thickener!"

Thank you so much, plllog!

I have not been on the NYT site recently, so I thought I could look as well. I have a couple of favorite recipes from there.

Wednesday morning, I understand what you mean. That Peacock's sauce has been enshrined in my memory for so long, it's become mythic. That parlor made their own ice cream and sauces. They were locally famous for it.

Though I haven't been able to recreate it, so far everything I've made has been pretty darn good, compared to what I could buy in a grocery store. There's something about the mouthfeel of the commercial sauces that I just don't like. I think it might be a stabilizer or emulsifier.

The comments made here have been very helpful to me. I'm not enough of a food scientist to know if something can be successfully tweaked or how to do it. I'll print them out and keep them with the recipes.

I've seen fancy pastry chefs on TV use fine milled flour to thicken chocolate, but probably for filling, rather than sauce. As to the sciency stuff, in most uses sugar is counted as liquid because it dissolves or melts, and it doesn't thicken things. Any other dry ingredient in a recipe can thicken, being careful not to use so much that it puts things out of balance. Just as more flour will thicken your pancake batter and take it from crepe to thick (fluffy comes from the eggs and bp), the cocoa powder, being the driest thing in the recipe, should thicken the sauce. I say "should" because I've never done such a thing with a finished chocolate sauce.

I'm picky about stabilizers and thickeners. I have a lot of things on Sleevendog's list. I'm fine with cornstarch pudding (soft American ”pudding” in the mousse/custard category) but dislike it in fruit pies, but do like tapioca in pies. In a blue moon I'll use a gum, guar or agar agar, but as called for in a recipe. My brain doesn't go there on its own, and in many uses I don't like the feel. OTOH, I'm much more likely to use starch as a thickener than any other thing. Flour in something flour based, but besides tapioca starch, I usually have potato starch, organic corn starch, and arrowroot. Maybe rice flour. They have differing consistencies. But not in chocolate, other than pudding. And not that often, since I'm more likely to just reduce,

I just ran across the recipe form a favorite hot fudge sauce remembered from my childhood. I'll see if i can find it again and copy and post....but it was essentially 1 cup Dutch processed cocoa, sugar think 1 1/2 cups...some butter....some cream...forget amounts.....and then cook it for at least 10 minutes.

Sorry but the thoughts of tapioca or other "gel" thickeners makes me think of Hostess Fruit pies.....and I will say "ewww!"

"If you would like to thicken the consistency (this is pretty thin!) into a syrup consistency, add a small bit of water to 1.5 Tablespoons of cornstarch and add it in with the cocoa and salt. It should thicken up nicely."

"Add a tablespoon of cornstarch to a quarter cup of milk.

Stir it thoroughly and heat it for a few seconds. Then, pour your mixture into the chocolate.

You must stir the cornstarch in some liquid and bring it to as close a temperature as the cooking mixture. If you fail to do so, you risk forming lumps in the mix and deteriorating the texture."

...modernist cusine looks at all previous dents and failures. Opening eyes to better outcomes even in the home prep. I just find all research intereresting...

I love it, all of it, looking at previous Mom and Pop what they did? So much more interesting what is looking at what can be done now...

If it gets gellid, that's way too much tapioca! You can turn juice into a solid with tapicoa. it's the gel texture that I dislike about cornstach in fruit pie. A small amount of tapioca starch will thicken the juice to a consistency like reducing, without that gel thing.

Sleevendog, that's from Modenist Cuisine?