Banana Splits with Hot Fudge Sauce

The vanilla bean was first cultivated and processed by the Aztecs, who used it to flavor a drink that would later be known as chocolate. Of the worlds vanilla beans, 75 percent come from Madagascar, with Tahitian and Mexican beans making up the rest. When time allows, it is always best to use vanilla beans, scraping all the flavorful seeds from the interior, but high-quality extract also delivers the distinctive sweet and complex flavor of the bean.