No baking required (part 1)

I may have been too busy to write any posts recently, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been making sweet treats! A lot of things I bake don’t really take much time (see chocolate all-in-one recipe to follow), but I thought I would share a couple of things I’ve made recently which are REALLY quick and easy, and don’t actually involve any baking. The only time factor you need to consider is chilling in the fridge.

Banoffee Pie

This recipe comes from my aunt Donna and is now an absolute must at any family gathering! It’s ridiculously easy to make but tastes divine (when you see the ingredients you’ll realise why!).

If you haven’t got a suitable flan dish you could improvise with a springform cake tin or even buy a large disposable foil one (or two little ones!)

Ingredients

digestive biscuits (about 250g)

butter (about 100g)

tin of condensed milk

2/3 bananas
cream (whipped)
bit of milk chocolate for decoration

Method
Crush the biscuits to a sandy texture with a food processer (or if you don’t have one you can put them in a freezer bag and hit with a wooden spoon/rolling pin). Melt the butter in microwave or in saucepan and mix it really well with the crushed biscuits. Then put this mixture into your dish and press it down until it’s nice and compact and a fairly even surface. This will need to chill in the fridge for a couple of hours.

To make the topping all you need to do is caramalise the condensed milk. You can now actually buy it already caramelised (it’s called Caramel, Dulce de Leche), in which case all you need to do is spread it on the chilled base! But if you’ve got a normal tin of condensed milk then pierce two small holes in the top and put it in a saucepan. Fill the saucepan with boiling water so it doesn’t quite reach the top of the tin and then keep it simmering for about 2 hours. Don’t worry if a little bit of the contents seems to get in the water. After 2 hours of boiling pour out any water that might have got in the tin, then open it – you should have lovely thick brown caramel inside! Give this a little while to cool down, then spread it on your chilled biscuit base.

Cut the banana into slices and cover the caramel. Then cover with the whipped cream (have this whipped already so you can cover the banana before it browns). Use the small bit of a grater to grate some flakes of chocolate on top and you’re ready to go!

This picture shows my recent effort half demolished! I didn’t have any chocolate and had to improvise with red sugar sprinkles which went a bit weird…

Oh one last thing, the only thing I don’t like about this recipe is I have to break my usual Nestle boycott to buy condensed milk (see http://www.babymilkaction.org/index.html) If anyone knows if it’s possible to get hold of any other brand then do let me know.