The notion of chocolate gravy is just weird until you’ve had some freshly made biscuits. I can assure you the Chocolate gravy recipe isn’t as weird as it seems. In fact, its unique name would make your mouth water, particularly if you have flaky, buttery biscuits nearby. This old-fashioned comfort food from the South uses just five simple ingredients, and it’s not seen nearly very much these days.
Intriguingly, the chocolate gravy recipe made its way to the Appalachians and the Ozarks, due to the influences of the Spanish colonists. It was (and ought to be!) a Sunday morning treat.
How to Make Chocolate Gravy
Ingredients
- Two cups of sugar
- 1/4 cup of baking cocoa
- 1 cup of a whole milk
- 2 teaspoons of butter
- 1/2 tablespoon of vanilla extract
- Hot biscuits (they will perform beautifully!)
Step 1: Cocoa whisk with milk
Sugar, cocoa powder, and milk are the main ingredients in this wonderful sauce and must be thoroughly combined in a big heavy saucepan before something more can happen. Like a delicious sauce, no one wants lumps. (If you’re hunting for meaty gravy, here are some tried and tested tips.)
Step 2: Bring to a Boil
Since milk is involved, you can’t fire the burner and walk away—simple it’s (and messy) for milk mixtures to boil over. Set the burner to medium heat and stir continuously for 7-10 minutes or until the sauce has thickened to a gravy-like consistency. If you like the thinner, that’s all right. Just stop this a little bit faster.
Step 3: Finish the Gravy
Butter brings more richness to the sauce, and vanilla helps to complement the intense chocolate taste. After extracting the pot from the oven, stir in the butter and vanilla until the butter is fully melted and blended.
Step 4: Feast!
Pour the finished gravy over hot biscuits or a pound of cake (or both—breakfast chocolate and dessert). It also fits for pancakes, ice cream, and a cup of fresh fruit.
Even if the name could throw you away, there’s nothing wrong with a rich chocolate sauce that you can enjoy at any time of the day.
Health benefits of chocolate
Dark chocolate is filled with ingredients that can have a positive effect on your well-being. Made from cacao tree seed, it is one of the best sources of antioxidants on the earth. Multiple pieces of research suggest that dark chocolate (not sugary crap) can improve your health and reduce the risk of heart disease.
Source of Antioxidants
ORAC stands for “oxygen radical absorbance capacity.” It is an indicator of the antioxidant function of food. Some researchers effectively set a bunch of free radicals (bad) against food samples to see how many antioxidants in food could “disarm” the radicals.
The biological validity of ORAC values is disputed since they are tested in the test tube and do not have the same impact on the body. It is worth noting, though, that organic, unprocessed cocoa beans are among the highest quality foods evaluated.
Chocolate is filled with organic compounds that are biologically active and serve as antioxidants. That includes polyphenols, flavanols, and catechins, among many others.
One research found that cocoa and dark chocolate had more antioxidant activity, polyphenols, and flavanols than all other fruit studied, including blueberries and acai berries.
Improve Blood Flow and Lower Blood Pressure
Flavanols in dark chocolate will induce the production of nitric oxide by endothelium, the lining of the arteries (NO). One of the functions of NO is to send signals to the calming arteries, which decreases resistance to blood flow and thus reduces blood pressure.
Many clinical studies indicate that cocoa and dark chocolate can increase blood flow and lower blood pressure, but the results are generally mild. However, one study of people with high blood pressure found no effect, so take all this with a grain of salt.
Reduce Heart Disease Risk
Compounds in dark chocolate tend to be extremely defensive against LDL oxidation according to studies by sans rival cake recipe. In the long term, this may cause much less cholesterol to lodge in the lungs, resulting in a lower risk of heart disease. In fact, some long-term retrospective studies show a very drastic shift. In a survey of 470 elderly men, cocoa has been shown to decrease the risk of death from heart disease by a staggering 50% over the 15-year period.
Another research showed that eating chocolate two or three days a week reduced the risk of calcified plaque in the arteries by 32%. Eating chocolate less often did not have any effect on the body. Yet another study found that eating dark chocolate more than 5 days a week reduced the risk of heart disease by 57%.
Of note, all three experiments are retrospective studies, but there is no proof that it was chocolate that reduced the risk. However, as the biological mechanism (low blood pressure and oxidized LDL) is known, it is possible that frequently eating dark chocolate may reduce the risk of heart disease.
