Banoffee Pie

Recipe 6 of 103

Banoffee Pie? New to me, how about you? It’s creation dates back to an English Pub called the Hungry Monk in the 1970’s in East Sussex. As I read the recipe I stopped at “caramelized milk” and I had a wtf moment. I read further and all I could think was, this is starting to sound white trash in a way and I love it! Caramelized milk is sweetened condensed milk in a can that has been boiled for 4 hours. I have never been a fan of sweetened condensed milk (aka SCM cause I’m tired of typing it), it reminds me of all those overly sweet dessert bars that were huge when I was a kid, if I see SCM in a recipe, I move on to something else. Admittedly I was curious about the process of caramelizing in the can, so I let my snobbery go and I dove into this recipe openly. Lets start with the caramelized milk. Boil two 14 ounce cans, labels removed of SCM for 4 hours. Make sure there is always at least 2 inches of water above the top of the cans. Rumor is, if the water gets below the top of the can they can explode. I didn’t want to test the rumor so I obeyed April’s advice, checking the water every 20 minutes or so.caramelmilk1This is what it looks like when its donecaramelmilk2

Still super sweet but it takes on a deeper caramel flavor. You could put this on all sorts of dessert items. Or just eat spoonfuls right out the can in the middle of the night….Jim!

On to the crust, here is what you will need.

1 1/2 cups AP flour

1/2 powdered sugar

1 stick unsalted butter chilled and cubed

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 large egg yolks

crust1Pulse in a food processor the flour, salt, sugar and butter until the mixture resembles bread crumbs, add the egg yolks, pulse until it looks like a crumbly dough. Pour onto your work surface and form into a ball, wrap in plastic and chill for at least 2 hours. crust2

This dough came together instantly, very easy to work with. Do not knead it to death, just ball it up into a disc, done. OK ready for the cool part? April grates her dough like cheese!! Brilliant! I love her method for this, no rolling out dough, yippee!crust3Cut your chilled dough into a few chunks and grate like cheese, press the grated dough into a fluted 10″ tart  pan with a removable bottom. Work quickly, you don’t want your warm hands to soften the dough too much. If it does get a bit warm while you’re working, let it rest in the fridge to cool down again. Prick the dough with a fork after you’ve got it all pressed into the tart shell.crust4Line your dough with a circle of parchment paper and fill with pie weights or dried beans and bake for 15 minutes at 350°, when edges are golden, remove beans and paper and bake for another 15 minutes until golden brown all over. Let crust coolcrustdoneLets assemble this pie. Here is what you will need.

8 to 10 small bananas

2 cans of caramelized milk

2 cups of chilled heavy cream

3 tablespoons of powdered sugar

1 vanilla bean split lengthwise

3 tablespoons grated dark chocolate

Grab your perfectly baked and cooled tart shell, layer the bottom with sliced bananas like this.banana

Add spoonfuls of the caramelized milkcaramelSpread the caramelized milk so it covers all the bananas like this, an offset spatula is the tool for this, get one.chillreadyAt this point chill the pie for at least 2 hours. April said to cover with plastic wrap, I did as she said and it stuck to the caramel and was a tragic mess trying to get it off the pie. Make your own call on this step.

Now on to the whoop cream! Yes I said whoop, get over it. Split your vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape out the vanilla caviar.vanillacaviarWhip the heavy cream, vanilla bean caviar and powdered sugar in a stand mixer. Whip until you have stiff peaks but not butter. whoopChill the whoop and spread another layer of bananas on your chilled piebanana2Top the pie with your freshly whipped creamwhup1Top with grated chocolatedone1Chill, serve chilled, keep chilled.done2So here are my thoughts on this pie. VERY SWEET! The bananas, cream and caramel are divine together and the crust is perfect. I would tweak a few things on the next go around, use less of the caramelized milk, no sugar in the whoop but use twice as much whoop. Maybe even add a layer of grated chocolate over the first layer of bananas? April says this pie would be the dessert for her last meal here on earth. My people loved it, sadly my Mom and Kid didn’t have the chance to try it yet, they are both huge banana cream pie fans, I’m guessing they will love this pie.

Cheers! I’m off to forage for food.

14 thoughts on “Banoffee Pie

  1. marissa

    Hi! Do you think 1 can will suffice? I don’t want it to be too sweet. I will probably top it with the lightly sweetened cream in the recipe, unless you think I should leave it unsweetened. Thanks!

  2. Pingback: Pine Nut Tart | Spry on Food

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s