delicious is a combination down at the Elephant and Castle in Dublin which combines coffee icecream, vanilla icecream, frozen raspberries, a little whipped cream and thick dark dark dark chocolate sauce - yums! Especially if you get to dip the odd spicy chicken wing in when nobody is looking! Microwave chocolate melting can be difficult as it is very easy to overheat and once you do that, it disintegrates. Just a word to the wise for anyone who has never tried it before - you might be better off taking your time with it... I love this column. Still hankering to say something about that American pancake business, but I'll restrain myself except to observe that a truly awful...wonderful...awful treat is a pancake holding a scoop of vanilla to which hot fudge is applied...you know, when you run out of syrup... Here in the US we have hot fudge and cold chocolate sauces. Quite different in consistency. Both great on ice cream. The trick with hot fudge sauce is to get it so that holds its thick and creamy consistency when drizzled over ice cream. Cold chocolate is more truly "chocolate-y" but thinner. Here's a link with a pretty good recipe for a hot fudge sauce--sending it for the photos--pretty good: ttp://smittenkitchen.com/2009/02/hot-fu\\... Golden syrup would be fine in this one. Cold chocolate sauce is made with sugar, not corn syrup. It's basically a sugar syrup (think hot simple syrup) with cocoa or bittersweet chocolate and vanilla. At least that's roughly