The other day I bought some vanilla ice cream to go with a can of chocolate sauce Id bought about a week before. I bought the chocolate sauce to go on some ice cream that I didnt realize had been eaten by my roomy. When we got home, the chocolate sauce ended up in the bag belonging to a friend that wed gone shopping with. So, unbeknownst to me, I didnt actually have any chocolate sauce to put on my newly acquired vanilla ice cream. I had bought chocolate sauce to go on non- existent ice cream and then bought ice cream to smother with the by then non-existent chocolate sauce. I didnt find this out until stricken by a severe attack of chocolate craving about midnight. I ransacked the kitchen to no avail. Nada, zilch, zip chocolate sauce. "Ah-ha!" I thought... "Im a cook++Ill just make some. Yeah++ thats it, Ill make some!" Right... Oooopppsss... No chocolate. Hmmm. But wait++heres some coco powder. A quick consultation with Irma and Marion told me I could make a substitute for chocolate using coco powder. Three tablespoons powder to 1 tablespoon butter = 1 oz. chocolate. Bingo! Were in business now... So I followed the following recipe making the pertinent substitutions... The grand kind that, when cooked for the longer period and served hot, grows hard on ice cream and enraptures children. Melt in a double boiler, over++not in++hot water: 2 oz. unsweetened chocolate. [I used six tablespoons coco powder and 2 tablespoons butter. S.C.] Add and melt: 1 tablespoon butter. Stir and blend well, then add: 1/2 cup boiling water. Stir well and add: 1 cup sugar and 2 tablespoons corn syrup. [I had exactly two tablespoons left in the bottle. Whew! S.C.] Permit the sauce to boil readily, but not too furiously, over direct heat. Do not stir. If you wish an ordinary sauce, boil it for 5 minutes. If you wish a hot sauce that will harden over ice cream, boil it for about 8 minutes. Add just before serving: 1 teaspoon vanilla or 2 teaspoons rum. When cold, this sauce is very thick. It may be reheated over boiling water. Makes 1 cup. From "The Joy of Cooking", Vol II, Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, 1964. Signet. I tossed the cocoa powder and the butter in a sauce pan over low heat (none of this double boiler nonsense), melted the butter and stirred it until everything blended, then proceeded with the recipe as directed. Guess what? It worked out GREAT! The sauce was just a tad grainy++ evidently I didnt cook it long enough to quite dissolve all the sugar. But what the heck++Im a texture food freak anyway so I didnt see it as a drawback. And the taste really was good. Posted by Stephen Ceideberg; September 28 1992. File ftp://ftp.idiscover.co.uk/pub/food/mealmaster/recipes/cberg2.zip