Monday 3 January 2011

Banoffee Pies

You know what's insanely delicious? Dulce de leche. 

If you can stop yourself eating it with a spoon out of the jar, I recommend making banoffee pies. 

If not, keep going. I don't blame you. 

As a little bit of fun, I decided to try and make my own digestive biscuits for the bases of these. I used a Constance Spry recipe. I love old recipe books. No temperature, no length of time (though I was told to not overbake them), you add sugar to taste... it's just wonderful. They came out tasting nice, but not really like the digestives I know. So I found some in the shops and used them for these instead. 

As I was melting the butter for the base, I had an idea. This idea often occurs when I'm melting butter for a baked item. Brown butter. Brown Butter. Brown Butter.  I had to try. Turns out it's delicious. Hello, cheesecake base!


Some people don't like banoffee pie. My housemate Sarah has it on her 'worst meal ever' list. This usually seems to be because of the bananas. I'm not the biggest banana fan in the world but that certainly doesn't mean I don't like banoffee. Oh no. 

Though, if I'm honest, I just tolerate the banana because it pulls together the utter gorgeousness that is brown-butter-biscuit-base, dulce de leche, whipped cream and chocolate. 

I didn't put strips of parchment around the sides of my dessert rings so the base kind of crumbled. Annoying, but it did mean that the dulce started escaping in a very food porn-esque manner: 


Banoffee Pies
(dulce recipe from David Lebovitz, here)

1 can condensed milk 
5 digestive biscuits 
40g butter
1 small-medium banana 
50ml double cream
dark chocolate curls to decorate

Preheat the oven to 200C. Empty the can of condensed milk into a pie dish or other type of shallow dish. Place into a bigger baking tray/roasting tin. Cover the pie dish tightly with foil. Fill the baking tray with hot water until it comes half way up the pie dish. Carefully place in the oven. Bake for 1 hour and 15-30 minutes. Check the water level a few times to make sure it doesn't get low and add more water if needed.  Take out of the oven and remove the foil - the dulce should be thick and deep golden brown. Leave to cool then whisk until smooth. Transfer to a clean jar. This will keep in the fridge.

When you're ready to make the pies (or after your dulce has cooled), crush the digestives in a small plastic bag with a rolling pin. Line two dessert rings with strips of baking parchment and then place on squares of parchment on a tray. Melt the butter in a small pan, continuing until the butter has browned (it should foam up, start smelling delicious and then die down to a liquid with little brown flecks). Let cool for a minute then tip in the crumbs and mix well. Press into the dessert rings, going up the sides a bit.  Put in the fridge until firm.

Spoon a few tablespoons of dulce into each mould. Top with half a banana, sliced. Put into the fridge. Meanwhile whip the cream until just past soft peak stage. Take the rings out of the fridge and top with the cream (you may need less than half). Place onto the serving plate. Loosen the bottom parchment and pull out. Lift the ring off then carefully peel off the strip of parchment (it may help to slide a knife around the top cream bit). Top with the chocolate curls and serve. Best eaten on the day.

(Makes two with extra dulce de leche)

Edit 21/04/16: I made a version of this recently, using one big pie dish, extra bottom, cream and banana and all of the dulce. It was delicious and surprised me in being better on the second day.


9 comments:

  1. Beautiful. And I heart brown butter. My hubby and daughter number one HATE bananas, so I haven't gotten around to making my own banoffee pies yet. But I do love eating them, wish I could have these ones :)

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  2. This looks amazing! The recipe I use for banoffee pie is from Patricia Lousada's Ultimate Chocolate cookbook. The bananas play a very minor role and what you actually get is a huge pile of caramel, cream, chocolate, and some bananas. It's the most delicious mess I've ever eaten!

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  3. Oh Emma! This looks so incredibly scrumptious. All of the components sound amazing. Brown butter? LOVE!

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  4. on YUM! thanks for this recipe! I've been eyeing banoffee pies for a while, just have to figure out when I'll have time to make them!

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  5. Poor old banoffee pies - I can't imagine anyone putting them on their "worst" list, I think they are wonderful.

    Happy New Year!

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  6. I've never had banoffee pie, I think it scares me a little bit. But I Love dulche de leche, so maybe I'll have to overcome my fears?!
    (p.s. whenever I hear banoffee pie, I alwasy think of that line in "Love Actually" when Keira Knightly talks about banoffee pie).

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  7. Kick that sarah to the curb...i'd appreciate anything that came out of ur oven! They look perfect despite the parchment...i like things to look a little 'undone'. Delish. Great old recipes remind me of my family recipes ( how much of that? Who knows!)
    Cupcake

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  8. So glad you shared a no risk dulce de leche recipe. I'd used the boil the tin method until recently when I heard that there was a good chance of it exploding. I like dulce de leche but not on my ceiling.

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  9. Have you ever used other biscuits instead of digestives? I like using bourbons (:

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