A super easy recipe for delicious natural chocolate sauce

If you think eating healthy means giving up chocolate, think again! Every diet needs a little wiggle room and if you are looking for some sweet relief or just want a more whole-food version of the squeeze bottle type stuff, try this recipe for a versatile, delicious chocolate sauce that tastes fantastic on almost anything!

The base for this sauce is expeller pressed, virgin coconut oil. In the past, many people believed that coconut oil was bad for us since it is a saturated fat. However, the fat in coconuts is actually a medium chain fatty acid that gets processed differently in the body than other saturated fats. Instead of being stored as fat, your body converts it to instant energy, helping you lose weight and feel fuller longer. Natural cocoa powder adds a great antioxidant boost to your snack and a low glycemic sweetener like agave nectar or real maple syrup helps keep your blood sugar from skyrocketing and crashing. The recipe is very easy to make and consists of only the following:

3 tbsp virgin coconut oil

2 tbsp natural cocoa powder

1 tbsp agave nectar or Grade B maple syrup

Stir all of the above ingredients together until a chocolate sauce is formed. You may adjust the amounts to suit your taste; some people like a more bitter, rich sauce with more cocoa and some like a sweeter sauce. Also, this works easier when the coconut oil is very soft or in liquid form. Like butter, coconut oil is a solid at room temperature, so if you place your dish of coconut oil in a bowl of hot water, it will liquify quickly. If you really need to eliminate sugars, you can experiment with substituting the agave or maple syrup with liquid stevia extract.

Be sure to use only expeller pressed, virgin coconut oil. You want to use only the freshest, most unrefined oil as this has the most health benefits, and that goes for any type of oil you use. Heat extracted or refined oil can often be rancid and will definitely not taste as good, not to mention be bad for your body to ingest. Rancid oils (trans fat falls into this category) are oils that have had too much exposure to oxygen which has corrupted the molecular structure so that free radicals are unleashed in your body upon ingestion, putting you at risk for disease and cellular degredation. Avoid oils that have been sitting out too long; you can usually tell if an oil is too old/rancid by smelling it; a rancid oil will have an "off" smell that might remind you slightly of plastic.

One of the coolest things about this sauce is that since it does harden with cooler temperatures, you can drizzle it on frozen fruit or ice cream and it will turn into "magic shell" instantly! In fact, if you examine the label of a bottle of commercial "Magic Shell" syrup, you will find it contains coconut oil, among some other more unnatural ingredients. By making your own syrup with pure coconut oil, you will find you have shell-making syrup that not only is better for you but tastes much richer and more delicious! Very cool feature for making chocolate covered strawberries or other treats. You can also do the opposite and warm the chocolate sauce until it is the consistency of chocolate syrup. I prefer to warm coconut oil by placing a dish of it in bowl of hot water; this is better than microwaving it, which can damage the nutritional benefits. Warming the sauce makes it very good for dipping or drizzling onto fruit or for making other treats like chocolate-covered chocolate chip cookies. The possibilities are endless.

Be creative with enjoying this guilt-free dessert topping!

If you have used coconut to make chocolate syrup or some other delicious topping, be sure to describe your creation in the comments section! I would love to hear about the uses to which you have put this versatile food. With such numerous health benefits such as lowering blood sugar and lowering the risk of Alzheimers by providing your brain with healthy energy, coconut oil is a must-have for every kitchen.