This week, my boss told me the first year back after you’ve been abroad is the hardest. So, only a few months to go until I don’t miss England anymore, right? Not likely. So, in the meantime, I made a pie, and not just any pie: a banoffee pie. Let me explain…
Ian and I went south to Brighton (one of my favourite places that we visited in the UK) for a weekend last summer and we took a day trip out to walk the Seven Sisters, and of course we ended the walk in a really cool pub, The Tiger Inn. Honestly, eating in pubs was the best.
Anyways, there were two guys beside us that we got talking to, one of them pretty intoxicated. We were just chatting away when the drunk guy asks if we’ve had banoffee pie yet. He proceeds to tell us that his friend’s great uncle is the one who invented it and it’s huge in England. We were intrigued. So when we got back to Cambridge, we must have asked our housemates about this pie – and they all knew exactly what we were talking about. Well, luckily, before we left for our travels, our housemate Alex made a banoffee pie and we were not disappointed. This pie is so, so tasty. I’m actually surprised it has taken me this long to make one myself.
The crust of this pie is butter and crushed digestives. We’ve all had digestives, right? Well, it’s a good thing I commuted by bicycle 24 km a day because I probably averaged a sleeve of digestives per week when we were living in Cambridge. Back to the crust, I don’t think I quite measured out enough butter.. that’s the tricky thing about English recipes, the measurements are all by mass. So a quick Google search will help you out or you can follow the same measurements I used a little further down the page.
As I was pressing the base into the springform pan, I wondered if I should have just used a regular pie pan (next time I will). I also realized after the pie was finished, that the pan I used was actually too big – so I didn’t get a nice high edge like the photos from the recipe showed. When I took the sides of the pan off, quite a bit of the crust broke off – which I was able to sort of fix by just adding it back on. Still quite crumbly. So make sure you use the proper 20 cm pan or just a plain one that isn’t springform should do it, too.
The directions for the toffee were great, except that it would appear in Canada, that our sweetened condensed milk does not come in 397 g cans like the recipe calls for. I just bought the 300 g can and went on my merry way. There was no way I was going to open a second can only to use a small amount.
Okay, we are almost there! I let the pie sit in the fridge for about an hour and a half while I went to my spin class. When I got home, it was ready for the whipped cream and bananas (and to be devoured). The small carton of whipping cream that I bought was over the suggested 150 mL, but that’s fine because what are you going to do with like 50 mL extra? Just put it on the pie. The recipe simply says to use the carton, but I added a little splash of vanilla while the cream was being whipped in the stand mixer. If you have your own recipe for whipped cream that includes adding sugar – do NOT add sugar! The toffee is very sweet, so the extra sugar would be overboard.
Bananas. This recipe only calls for two. Well, I say that’s crazy talk. I sliced two of them and laid the pieces on top of the toffee. Then I added the whipped cream, the third banana on top of that and a sprinkle of cocoa.
The recipe says this pie will serve 12. But I’m not convinced. Well, I mean, if there were 12 people here we would make it work. But I think 8 normal sized pieces would be a little more realistic. But that’s just me. There actually were only three of us though.. and the extra pieces kept nicely in the fridge until the next evening.
I mentioned that I would give you the measurements I used, so here goes:
Crust: butter 1/2 cup; 16 digestives (about 2 1/4 cups)
Toffee: butter 1/3 cup; dark brown sugar 1/3 cup
Before I go, I will add that our drunk pub neighbour was a) very drunk, b) rolling cigarettes and c) telling us he was going to run an Iron Man in a few short weeks. So.. yes, the banoffee pie is amazing and delicious, but jury’s still out on whether we met a relative of the inventor or not. I like to think we did.
Lesson of the day: when you’re missing somewhere, something or someone, head to the kitchen and make something that brings you back to that happy place.
