Hot Fudge Sauce

Just as anything made with cocoa varies from plebeian to aristocratic, depending on the quality of chocolate, so hot fudge sauce ranges from thin, supermarket varieties that differ little from any chocolate syrup to butter-rich, intensely chocolaty syrups that are smooth as velvet. Top of the line hot fudge tends to be a bittersweet, not-too-thick syrup that just barely begins to bead when its warmth hits cool ice cream. It then blends slowly with the ice cream into a black and white river in which the fudge underlines the creaminess of the ice cream and the ice cream teases maximum cocoa flavor from the fudge.