When growing up in South Africa,  I used to like going to this place called "Juicy Lucy"!  It was a healthy restaurant that served fresh fruit juices, sandwiches and frozen fruit bars.  I loved their papyaya juice and their frozen fruit bars.  They literally took spears of pineapple and whole bananas, froze them and dipped them in a hard shell chocolate sauce that would form a uniform hardened chocolate coating. 

I also remember enjoying the hard shell chocolate sauce with the soft serve ice cream from places like Dairy Queen and El Pollo Loco until my stomach decided it didn't like the ingredients in the ice cream.  You would have a beautiful soft serve ice cream cone that was dipped in this silky, smooth, brown liquid which didn't melt your ice cream. The chocolate would harden into a very thin shell that molded to the shape of the ice cream.  Every time you took a bite, there would be this "crack" followed by a mouthful of ice cream.  Oh so decadent! 

I decided to do a chocolate experiment to see the outcomes of different liquids mixed with chocolate in the microwave and whether adding the liquid before or after microwaving had an effect.  See Melting Chocolate in my Tips & Tricks section.  I rediscovered my chocolate hard shell.  So simple and easy with  a variety of applications.

Tips:

Chocolate does burn if heated too long in the microwave.  I suggest that you use small amounts of chocolate as the chocolate sauce should only be a topping and not the main event!  I usually melt my chocolate sauce (2 servings) in a ramekin and still have leftovers!