In the early 2000s, shortly after that movie Love, Actually became a kind of holiday film phenomenon, the Wife and I took a trip to the UK. On her travel bucket list for our trip was to locate a slice of “Banoffee Pie” which was not something that had made it’s way over to Canada, but had been mentioned in passing in a scene of the movie.
Small ideas can drive life long adventure, and one of my stories of this is wrapped around a slice of banana and toffee pastry.
Banoffee Pie has some variation in it’s composition, but the basic recipe seems to be this: a graham cracker crust is painted with a generous slosh of dulce de leche (a kind of condensed-milk liquid toffee-equse bit of heaven in a can) filled with sliced bananas and topped with sweet whipped cream. It turns out it is amazing. Every time I make a banoffee pie it disappears with compliments and people asking what the hell was that and can I have the recipe?
Until recently, however, dulce de leche was not just something that was easy to come by. Sure, it can be made at home, but with some risk that involves the potential for explosions and minor kitchen destruction. Now, in Canada at least, it’s part of a very small product line by a company that also makes condensed milk — they just caramelize some of it and sell it as this nectar of the gods.
Recipe
Ingredients
Directions
The result tastes so close to banoffee pie, even aligning some of the textures with the crunch and the swirl, that even after just a few bites I’m debating, but I think this may be my preferred banoffee format. I think. Either that or I just invented the worlds most perfect ice cream flavor.
