When was the last time you had a banana split?

What with the chilly weather predicted for this weekend, and a sore throat/runny nose on the verge of becoming a cold, I decided it might be best to spend the weekend hibernating. In furtherance of this goal, I stayed in bed until well into the morning, and this afternoon wrapped myself in a duvet and settled on the couch to watch my way through The Lord of the Rings trilogy.


Halfway through The Two Towers, I found myself wanting chocolate. Well, I didn't have any chocolate in the house and going out to get some doesn't really fit with the hibernation thing, so I had to think outside the box a bit. Chocolate sauce (p189) would do the trick, but I had to come up with something to have it with. My eyes strayed to the fruit bowl and I thought of something I hadn't eaten in years: a banana split.

The sauce took no time at all to make. You just mix cocoa with cornflour and a little milk, add butter, sugar and the rest of the milk, then stir it over a low heat for a few minutes until it thickens. Easy.


While the sauce was cooking, I cut a banana in half and scooped out a couple of balls of ice cream. When the sauce was ready, I poured it straight over the ice cream and sprinkled over some chopped nuts. The hot sauce melted the ice cream almost immediately, but it still tasted great.

The sauce itself was perhaps a little disappointing in terms of chocolate flavour - it mostly tasted of cocoa. But the combination of the sauce with creamy vanilla ice cream, banana and nuts was actually fantastic. I couldn't believe I'd gone so long without eating one of these. Well, it won't be years before I have another one!