Banoffee Pie

                                                                                 

                                                                                    

This delightful dessert should be tried long before your 6th decade. Who knew toffee paired with banana could be ultra delightful? Apparently many.

The original was created in England by Ian Dowding and proper English name was Banoffi Pie. Below is the link to his explaination of how he came up with the combinations and also a link to the orignal recipe. Which includes coffee in the whipped cream. 

https://iandowding.co.uk/the-completely-true-and-utter-story-of-banoffi-pie/

For my version I used a graham cracker crumb crust, condensed milk toffee, bananas of course and whipped cream for the topping. 

Crust:

 Base recipe from "Bake with Anna Olsen". It is the base part of her strawberry cream tarts. 

1cup/ 150 gm cup all purpose flour

1 cup/ 125 gm graham cracker crumbs

4 tsp/16 gm sugar

1/4 tsp/ 1gm salt

1/2 cup/ 115 gm unsalted butter melted

For the crust combine flour, graham crumbs, sugar and salt in a bowl. Add melted butter and press into a pie plate or nine inch spring form pan. Bake for 10 minutes at 350 F. Cool to room temp.

Next comes the filling. For this one I took from two different recipes with similar caramel ingredients. Basically modified from two formulas found in thrift store cookbook finds. 

The Complete Book of Desserts by Martha Day and Illustrated Step by Step Baking  by Caroline Bretherton. One recipe calls for sweetened condensed milk and the other called for a can of condensed milk. Because I had a can of both I used the full can of sweetened condensed which wasn't enough at about 300 g and then used some condensed milk 100gm  to have a full 400 gm. Both called for butter,  one for a cup and the other only 4 tablespoons. I went for 1/2 cup. one called for 2/3 cup of brown sugar and the other was only1/3. I went for about 1/3 and added some corn syrup.

14 oz /400 gm of condensed milk ( combo of sweetened condensed milk and condensed milk if needed)

1/2 cup/115gm butter    

1/3 cup/ 115 gm light brown sugar   

1-2 tbsp corn syrup

Place ingredients in a saucepan and melt all together then bring to gentle boil for 3-7 mins until sauce thickens. Use a whisk to stir and help prevent burning. Pour over cooled crust and leave until completely cooled.

Meanwhile take about 300 ml of whipping cream, 2-3 tablespoons of sugar and you can optionally add 1 tablespoon of milk powder which Anna Olsen says helps to stabalize the whipped cream. Leave the whipped cream in the fridge until you are ready to use.

Next you will need about 3 bananas to cut into about 1/4 inch slices. I put a little lemon juice in the bowl of  banana slices to keep them from turning brown. It really does help as the next day in the fridge the banana on the pie was still a fresh banana colour.

Place the banana slices all around the caramel in a circular neat fashion.

You can spoon the whipped cream onto the bananas or place the whipping cream into a piping bag and pipe it onto the bananas. Lastly top with shaved chocolate and enjoy.