And we're in...

After over two months of hard work (damn it was I being optimistic when I thought we'd manage in three weeks!) we've finally made the move. Both the husband and I are happy with the results... we've managed to go round the house's shortcomings and transform it into a comfy and welcoming home. Still, the new oven and washing machine haven't yet been delivered... as often happens on this tiny island... things move sloooooowly. But I have my slowcooker, a hob, a microwave oven and a rice cooker which should suffice to start off my daily cooking right? It's a challenge, but so far (ok, I've only cooked two meals) I'm managing. As for our laundry, I'll be using my mother-in-law's washing machine next door, which I'm awfully grateful for!

I had been promising the husband that I was gonna make him banoffee pie from scratch as soon as we moved into our new house. See, banoffee pie is his soft spot... and he had really worked hard what with moving heavy boxes and piles and piles of clothes (mostly his), drilling holes to put up new curtain rails, hammering in nails for our degree certificates that we finally got round to framing, cleaning out and organising the garage... plus all the technical stuff having to do with setting up our laptops and internet connection. Thanks to his being thoughtful enough to buy a router I now have a wireless connection which enables me to surf the net from my kitchen - I've been teasing the mother-in-law about being able to look up recipes at the click of a mouse ever since! So, he really did deserve a treat - so yesterday I browsed through some recipes for banoffee pie. Most recipes revolved around some variations, mainly having to do with:

1) Type of base: Pastry crust or Cheesecake biscuit base;

2) Toffee preparation: Ready made, cooked in can (4 hours of boiling cans of condensed milk in a pan) or prepared in an oven (pour condensed milk in a glass dish, put in bigger dish half filled with water, cover with tin foil and bake for 2 hours).

The base definitely had to be the cheesecake biscuit version, just cause I had asked the husband beforehand and he confirmed he preferred it. As for the toffee, boiling cans of condensed milk on a stove (whilst keeping an eye on them for the full 4 hours making sure that they are always covered with water, or else risk dangerous explosions of hot scalding toffee all over your kitchen) sure sounded like going back to chemistry experimental sessions... tempting, especially after reading all the rants about the delicious dulce de leche that results. But I was gonna get back from work at 4pm the earliest, so my pie wouldn't be even close to ready by dinner. So, needing to adopt an oven, I called the mother-in-law and explained my problem - she had a couple of cans of condensed milk (of the low-fat type incidentally, made with skimmed milk instead of full fat milk, still has normal amount of sugar which is the bit I wanted to caramelise, so worked perfectly well) and offerred to put them in the oven for me as explained. When I got back home, I popped next door and found a dish of gooey toffee ready to be transformed into a decadent dessert.

Back in my kitchen, one last look at the sad ripe bananas on the counter - soon you'll be heroes my friends.. here's the list of ingredients:

Banoffee Pie

Base

300 g digestive biscuits + ginger biscuits + Mulino Bianco's Grancereale Croccante biscuits
150 g melted butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar
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Filling

3 ripe bananas, sliced
600 mL condensed milk
400 mL fresh cream
2 tablespoons caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
1 cup grated dark chocolate
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What to do
First thing to get out of the way is preparing the dulce de leche - that's the caramelised condensed milk - just open the cans and pour the condensed milk into a glass dish, cover it tightly with tin foil, then place it into a larger dish that's half-filled with water. Put everything in an oven and bake at 150 degrees celcius for 2 hours. Once it's ready allow it to cool down to room temperature then put it in a fridge or freezer if you want to speed up the process.
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While the condensed milk's in the oven, start working on the base - just throw the biscuits into a food processer and process until they're all finely chopped. Add the melted butter and sugar and whizz everything round until the mixture has blended well. You want a moist crumb which you can work with, but not a paste, so add more biscuits or butter to the mixture accordingly. The amounts will vary slightly according to the type of biscuits you use - although most recipes indicated using digestives, I wanted a more flavoured and easier to bite into base. So I mixed the digestives with ginger biscuits (for just a bit of spicy flavour) and Grancereale Croccante (very very crumbly and crunchy made with cereals and rice) make the base a bit less compact. This combination worked well I must say - will be trying it for other variations of cheesecake. When you're happy with the consistency of the base, press the mixture onto the base of an 8 inch springform tin. I got a pretty thick layer, about half an inch, cause that's how we like our cheesecake base - you could decrease the thickness if you think that's too much. Once the base is all spread out, place it in the fridge for an hour till it sets, or in the freezer like I did, for about 20 minutes.

When the base has set, spread half the dulce de leche on the biscuit base, then chop the bananas and arrange in concentric circles on top of the toffee. The remaining dulce de leche is then spread on top of the banana layer. For the final layer, whip the fresh cream with the castor sugar and vanilla essence and spread on top of the pie. Sprinkle the finely grated chocolate on top of the cream layer to make it pretty.

Ideally you should refridgerate this decadence for at least another hour - but if you can't wait, like my husband, go ahead and indulge. A word of warning though - the layers could fall apart if not allowed to set properly, though the husband's oohs and aahs weren't indicating any sort of discontentment!! It tasted even better this afternoon since the banana flavour had come through even more. So there you have it - easy peasy banoffee pie that's sooo much better than other versions we've had at restaurants! And it really did make our first official dinner in our new home even sweeter :)