Banoffee Pie Recipe

In 1971, two Brits named Nigel Mackenzie and Ian Dowding got here up with the banoffee pie, a well-liked dessert that apparently counts members of the British royal household amongst its followers. Its title is a portmanteau of banana and toffee, and with a buttery crust and a gooey dulce de leche filling topped with sliced bananas and whipped cream, the confection has gained over the hearts and stomachs of many. In keeping with The Telegraph, Mackenzie and Dowding had been experimenting with an “apparently ‘unreliable’ American recipe” for “Blum’s Espresso Toffee Pie,” a dessert the San Francisco pastry store Blum’s offered from the Nineteen Fifties to the Seventies. Blum’s pie had a creamy custard filling flavored with on the spot espresso and melted chocolate, all topped with a lofty crown of whipped cream. 

Although Blum’s dessert contained no fruit, Mackenzie, the proprietor of the Hungry Monk restaurant in Britain’s East Sussex, was desperate to provide you with a model that did. Collectively, Mackenzie and his head chef, Dowding, experimented with varied fruits, however none have been as inviting as creamy, tropical bananas. “The day we made it with a layer of bananas, I knew we had cracked it,” Dowding wrote in The Guardian in 2006. The dessert rapidly turned a success on the restaurant after which in different eateries and houses all through the UK. Quickly, it had reached different corners of the world, showing on menus so far as Australia. 

It’s not stunning, since a part of the dish’s attraction, particularly to house bakers is its ease and approachability and, after all, its deliciousness. I first encountered it at college in Scotland when a buddy confirmed as much as a potluck with a freshly made banoffee pie. It quickly turned my go-to dessert each time I wanted to carry one thing to a cocktail party: As a school pupil who knew virtually nothing about baking, banoffee pie was not solely terribly simple to make, however it was reasonably priced, too. It requires nothing greater than some butter, a packet of cookies (or biscuits, in British parlance), a can of sweetened condensed milk, a number of bananas, and a carton of heavy cream—perhaps a block of chocolate for shaving on prime, when you’re feeling fancy. 

There have been many evenings when my flatmates and I, every with a spoon in hand, would crowd round a single banoffee pie as we shed tears over a breakup or giggled over gossip about our professors. I can’t bear in mind who precisely taught me easy methods to make the deal with, however I’ve tweaked the recipe to my liking through the years and have made it so many instances I now understand it by coronary heart. It’s a comparatively easy dessert, however placing some additional thought into the crust, filling, and topping will help you make a banoffee pie that can steal the present at each potluck you carry it to. Listed here are my suggestions for doing simply that.

For the Finest Banoffee Pie Crust, Attain for a Packet of British Biscuits

As we speak, many banoffee pie recipes name for a graham cracker crust. I desire utilizing digestive biscuits, a hearty British cookie, as they’ve a pleasantly earthy taste and are barely much less candy. Some individuals, Dowding included, abhor the concept of utilizing crushed up cookies to make crust and advocate for utilizing a shortcrust pastry dough as an alternative. Some desserts—like an American-style apple pie that depends on a sturdy dough for its structural integrity—are price rolling out a correct crust for. However banoffee pie is just not certainly one of them.

I don’t consider in taking shortcuts on the expense of taste, however that is the uncommon event the place the simplest technique—coating biscuit crumbs with butter—additionally occurs to be probably the most scrumptious. You pulverize the cookies in a meals processor or place them in a zip-top bag to smash up with a rolling pin, toss the crumbs with salt and melted butter, then press them right into a tart pan. Baking the crust briefly helps to set it, whereas additionally bringing out its buttery, toasty flavors.

For a Creamy, Lusciously Candy Filling, Simmer Condensed Milk

“Banoffee” could indicate that there’s espresso or toffee within the dessert, however the filling entails neither. Somewhat, it consists of what many mistakenly name a caramel sauce: dulce de leche. “Whereas it appears like caramel, it’s, in reality, based mostly on the Maillard browning of dairy fairly than the caramelization of sugar,” contributor Nila Jones notes in her recipe for the sauce. “Which will sound like a technicality, however it offers dulce de leche a candy and mellow, toffee- or butterscotch-like taste with out the bitterness related to caramel (i.e., burned sugar).”

Although you possibly can spend hours stirring a pot of milk and sugar on the stovetop till it reduces and browns, it’s a lot simpler to do as Nila and lots of different British house cooks do: Make the dulce de leche by simmering a can of sweetened condensed milk till it turns into thick and golden brown. This technique additionally takes a number of hours, however is extra hands-off and produces a filling that’s simply as flavorful. The longer you simmer, the thicker and extra “set” the dulce de leche might be.

For a thicker, darker filling with deep taste, I cook dinner the condensed milk for 4 hours—in my assessments, something shorter than that resulted in a sauce that was too skinny, making it tough to chop and portion the pie. To avoid wasting time, I typically cook dinner three cans without delay, as unopened cans can sit at room temperature for as much as three months. As soon as the condensed milk has completed cooking and cooling, I pour it right into a bowl and season it generously with salt, which highlights its wealthy, buttery dairy flavors. 

A phrase of warning: Simmering condensed milk could be the extra “hands-off” technique, however it’s nonetheless important to control the pot of water to make sure the can is at all times submerged in boiling water, because the condensed milk can explode and trigger burns and accidents. (See the editor’s word for extra security suggestions.)

How Ripe Ought to Bananas Be for Banoffee Pie?

As a result of the filling is so candy, you need bananas which can be simply ripe and nonetheless barely agency, so select bananas with mild, vibrant yellow pores and skin with few to no brown spots. Something riper or softer than that can produce a banoffee pie that’s each tough to assemble and cloyingly candy.

Depart Your Whipped Cream Unsweetened

I usually desire sweetened whipped cream, however protecting the whipped cream plain and unsweetened right here helps to steadiness out the wealthy filling. The lightness of the whipped cream in opposition to the denser however nonetheless creamy bananas, the thick dulce de leche, and the crisp crust makes every chunk a nice distinction of textures and flavors—which is all the things I would like in a dessert.