Banoffee Pie - Random Recipes #22

The month has been galloping away from me - again - and I realised it was time to get on with my Random Recipe for Dom at Belleau Kitchen. This month we were tasked with picking a book using our birthday date. OK that bit was easy - number 8 for me. But where to start? My books are scattered over the house in various places. Not so randomly perhaps, I started with a shelf of baking books. No. 8 got me Eric Lanlard's Home Bake. As CT wasn't around, I used a random number generator to give me the page 191. Taking a tentative peek, you just never know what you might be landed with, I was neither relieved nor horrified. Bananas are not a favourite fruit in this household, although we're not averse to a good banana cake and what I'd got was banoffee pie. Well, OK, this wasn't going to be difficult - good news. I hadn't had banoffee pie in many a year and I'd certainly never made one, so time to see what I thought of it these days. I followed Eric's recipe more or less, but only used two ripe bananas rather than three under ripe ones and a lot less cream - 500ml seemed rather excessive.

This is how I did it:

• Buttered a 22 cm flan dish.
• Melted 75g unsalted butter in a pan over low heat.
• Bashed 300g of plain chocolate hobnobs into crumbs with the end of a rolling pin.
• Poured in the butter and mixed well.
• Pressed the crumbs into the base and around the sides of the dish.

• Melted 100g unsalted butter in the same pan.
• Keeping the pan on the heat, added 100g dark brown sugar and stirred until all incorporated.
• Added a 397g tin condensed milk and stirred.
• Continued to stir whilst slowly bringing the mixture to the boil. The stirring was crucial here as each time I thought I'd take a break, the mixture caught and I was getting bits of unintended caramel in the mix.
• As soon as the mixture came to the boil, removed from the heat and poured onto the biscuit base.
• Left to cool. There was no need to put this in the fridge as my kitchen was plenty cold enough.

• Whipped 300ml whipping cream until peaked but not too stiff.
• Sliced two ripe bananas and laid over the cooled caramel.
• Spooned the cream over the top of the bananas.
• Sprinkled dark chocolate chips over the top.

The crunchy base, sticky caramel, soft banana and unctuous cream made for an indulgent dessert. It was very sweet, but I still managed to consume my first slice very happily. Later in the day, I happily consumed a second slice too. The bananas gave a nice flavour, but didn't overwhelm and the texture was hidden by the other ingredients. Using chocolate hobnobs was a good way of incorporating chocolate to create a particularly toothsome base. Even CT with his avowed banana aversion struggled manfully and scoffed several slices. It actually lasted us a few days, so kept us off the chocolate bars.

I am also entering this into Cook Eat Delicious Desserts with Sharan's Samayalarai as the theme this month is banana.