As you probably know, yesterday was Pi Day. I’ll take any excuse to eat pie and it has no calories if I make it myself, right? I went with Banoffee Pie because it’s so yummy and there’s no need to fuss with any pastry if you don’t want to. Banoffee Pie is an English dessert, it’s made from bananas, toffee and fresh whipped cream. Mine also has an oreo crust and shaved chocolate because I’m a firm believer that chocolate makes almost everything better!

In case you hadn’t guessed it yet, it gets its name from smooshing banana and toffee together, like a perfect marriage that rivals even your biggest OTP!

I did make this pie on Pi day, but we had a busy day yesterday and after stuffing our face with these amazing black bean flautas (I know this is a baking blog, but you definitely need to try them they’re so good) it was 11:30pm by the time I finished baking the pie, hence why you’re getting this post a day late!

It’s been a very stressful few days for me. I’m in Atlanta right now and I was supposed to fly home to the UK on Thursday night, but I got to the airport only to be told by the checking in agent that they wouldn’t allow me to fly because my passport had been damaged! And I can tell you this now, it’s a very scary thing to be told you’re being denied permission to fly! It’s going to work out okay, I’m still in the US but I’m taking a trip to the British Embassy on Tuesday to get an emergency travel document so I can fly home without a valid passport on Thursday. It’s going to cost me a small fortune and I’m missing a Fall Out Boy concert, but that’s where pie comes in to make me feel better!

The caramel toffee in a banoffee pie is traditionally made by boiling cans of condensed milk but I have never made it that way, it’s not that hard to do but I’m too impatient to wait the few hours it takes – plus there’s also a danger the can could explode if you don’t keep it fully submerged and that sounds like something that would happen to me! I made my caramel by cooking butter, brown sugar and condensed milk until a caramel formed. I’ll be honest with you, I did over cook mine a little and so I ended up with a very hard caramel, which isn’t necessarily bad it’s just a bit hard to eat in pie form! You want to remove it from the heat once it turns thick and golden.

I used an oreo crust, which I just made by crushing whole oreos and mixing them with melted butter (you can crush them in a food processor or, if your food processor is full of spicy avocado dip like ours was, you can get your happy helper to crush them in a bag like I did, thanks Leah!). Then you press it into your pan and allow to cool and harden. You then pour in the caramel and top with a few banana slices (I like some of the banana to get all set in the set caramel yum) and put in the fridge for at least an hour, until completely cooled. Then top with more sliced bananas, whip up some cream and stir in yet more sliced bananas and spoon it over the pie, then just decorate with shaved chocolate

You can, of course, present this much more neatly. You can pipe on the whipped cream and arrange the bananas on top in pretty patterns instead of stirring them into the cream, but I like it all mixed up in the cream. And honestly, I like the messy rustic look for this pie! You obviously want to keep it chilled, just take it out of the fridge about 15 minutes before you plan to serve it. If you’ve never had banoffee before, trust me you’re gonna love it. There’s something about banana and toffee together that tastes so good, honestly toffee without banana just tastes wrong to me! It’s the perfect end to a very stressful week!

[recipe title=”Banoffee Pie”]

Ingredients

For the base:

• 300g Oreos, finely crushed
• 90g melted butter

For the toffee:

• 100g butter
• 100g light brown sugar
• 1 can of sweetened condensed milk (396g can)

For the topping:

• 3 ripe bananas, sliced
• 250ml double cream
• Shaved chocolate

Method

• Grease a 22cm springform tin and line the bottom with parchment paper.
• Mix the butter and crushed Oreos and press into the tin to make the crust. Place in the fridge while you make the toffee caramel
• To make the toffee, melt the butter and sugar in a non stick pan over a low heat, stirring continuously.
• Once the butter is melted and the sugar is dissolved, add the condensed milk and mix well.
• Bring to a rapid boil, stirring constantly, until you get a thick golden caramel (about 5 mins)
• Pour onto the Oreo base and press a few banana slices into the toffee, allow to cool, chill for at least an hour
• Remove the pie from the tin and transfer to your serving plate
• Place more banana slices over the top, lightly covering it
• Whip the cream until you have stiff peaks and gently stir in the remaining sliced bananas
• Spoon the cream over the top and sprinkle shaved chocolate over the top (you can use a grater to do this or, to get curls, run a potato peeler down the edge of a bar of chocolate)
• Keep chilled and remove from fridge 15 minutes before serving

[/recipe]