Welcome to Nigella

If ever you've - lazily, guiltily - bought ready-peeled, sliced, cubed fruit from the supermarket, and then wondered why you bothered, when you get home to discover the fruit is brightly hued but dimly flavoured, this is the solution. Anything, frankly, dunked into butterscotch sauce tastes good, and this is a fabulous everyday or even party pudding.

I own up, the fruit in the picture did come out of a cellophane box - the mango ready cubed, the melon ready sliced - but mostly I make this for the children, using bananas and pears I have managed to peel and slice myself. The strawberries you don't even need to hull: their stalks are useful to lower the berries into the molten fondue.

I give everyone - here just the two of us - a little cup of fondue for their own individual dipping. It does mean you make more sauce than is needed, but gets round the shared spit and saliva issue. Or you could make half the amount and pour over a cubed mix of pineapple, papaya and mango.

Either way, you don't want the butterscotch fondue too fiercely hot, not least because it will be too runny. If you make it before you sit down to eat, it should be just about perfect by the time you reach pudding. I am also pretty keen on this cold, spooned straight from the cup.