Lorraine Pascale's banoffee pie

I've had Lorraine Pascale's Baking Made Easy for a while now and have flicked through it many times but never actually got around to making any of the recipes until this week when I decided it was finally time to give her banoffee pie recipe a go.

(Try and ignore the burn mark on our chopping board. There was an unfortunate accident with a pan a few weeks ago)

As I'm sure you can tell I did have just a tiny bit of trouble cutting the pie neatly into slices but with this sort of cooking the taste is way more important than the look of the thing anyway and thanks to the fact that there was no oven involved in this recipe, there was no chance for me to burn anything! So despite all the mess it was actually pretty delicious, if I do say so myself.

Recipe from page 114 of Baking Made Easy by Lorraine Pascale

Ingredients

Toffee layer

1x400g (14oz) can of condensed milk (or a can of pre-made caramel)

Biscuit base

180g (6 1/2oz) digestive biscuits, crushed

100g (3 1/2oz) butter, melted

Banana layer

25g (1oz) butter

3 bananas, sliced

3 tbsp rum (optional)

Seeds of 1/2 vanilla pod or 2 drops of vanilla extract

Cream topping

300ml (11fl oz) whipping cream

1 tbsp icing sugar

Seeds of 1/2 vanilla pod or 2 drops of vanilla extract

Equipment

23cm (9in) deep flan ring or loose-bottomed cake tin

Method

To make the toffee layer, put the can of condensed milk in a medium pan, cover it with water and boil for 2 hours. Tedious, I know but worth it in the tasty stakes. If you have a can of pre-made caramel you can skip this step.

Meanwhile, for the base, put the biscuits and melted butter into a large bowl and mix together, then press into the flan ring or tin. Put in the fridge for about 30 minutes, or until firm.

To make the banana layer, melt the butter in a medium pan, add the bananas, rum and vanilla and cook for a few minutes until the bananas have soften slightly. Set aside.

For the cream, whip the whipping cream, vanilla and icing sugar until it begins to thicken then set aside. Put the mixture in the fridge for about 30 minutes, or until set.

To assemble, remove the biscuit base from the fridge. Spoon the caramel or condensed milk over the base and then layer over the bananas. Tip the whipped cream over the pie and spread it over to cover completely. Put the pie in the fridge for 30 minutes before serving.