The Banoffee pie is a British sweet pie made with bananas, whipped cream, and a thick caramel sauce (made from boiled condensed milk or dulce de leche), on a base of crumbled biscuits and butter.
Some versions of the recipe also include chocolate and/or coffee.
The credit for the invention of the pie goes to Nigel Mackenzie and Ian Dowding, respectively the owner and chef of the former Hungry Monk restaurant in Jevington, East Sussex, England.
The two claim they created the dessert in 1971, based on a San Francisco recipe for “Blum’s Coffee Toffee Pie,” which used a kind of dulce de leche, a soft toffee made by boiling an unopened can of condensed milk for several hours.
Mackenzie and Dowding tried various modifications, including the addition of apple or tangerine, Dowding suggested the banana and Mackenzie the name Banoffee Pie, and the pie quickly became popular
The word “banoffee” has entered the English language, used to describe any food or product that tastes or smells of both banana and toffee.
In 1984, several supermarkets began selling it as an American pie, prompting Mackenzie to offer a £10,000 prize to anyone who could disprove their claim of being the English inventors.
- Difficulty: Medium
- Cost: Inexpensive
- Rest time: 1 Hour
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Portions: 6 People
- Cooking methods: Stove
- Cuisine: English
- Seasonality: All seasons
Ingredients
- 8 oz digestive biscuits
- 6 oz butter
- 2.6 oz sugar
- 13.4 fl oz condensed milk
- 2 bananas
- 5.3 oz whipping cream
Tools
- 1 Baking Pan 8.5 inches
Steps
Crush the biscuits, and add 3.5 oz of melted butter.
Line the base of a 22 or 25 cm springform pan with the biscuits, pressing down with a spoon to adhere them.
In a small saucepan, boil for about 1 minute 2.6 oz of butter with the sugar and the condensed milk.
Pour the cream over the biscuit base and, after cooling, place the pan in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
Slice the bananas, whip the cream. Decorate the pie and finish with a dusting of cocoa over the cream.
A recipe for the pie, which uses a crumbly biscuit base, is often featured on cans of Nestlé condensed milk.
The recipe was published in “The Deeper Secrets of the Hungry Monk” in 1974 and reprinted in the 1997 cookbook “In Heaven with The Hungry Monk”.
