Banoffee pie

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A slice of banoffee pie.

Banoffee pie (also spelled banoffi, or banoffy) is an English dessert made from bananas, cream and boiled condensed milk (or dulce de leche), either on a pastry base or one made from crumbled biscuits and butter. Its name is a portmanteau constructed from the words "banana" and "toffee".

[edit] History

Credit for the pie's invention is claimed by Ian Dowding and Nigel Mackenzie of The Hungry Monk restaurant in Jevington, East Sussex. They claim to have invented the pie in 1972, and the restaurant's exterior bears a blue plaque to that effect. The dish, with various stories of its source, spread, and in 1994 a number of supermarkets began selling it as an American pie, leading Dowding and Mackenzie to offer a £10,000 prize to anyone who could disprove their claim. [1]

The recipe was originally revealed in 'The Deeper Secrets of the Hungry Monk' in 1974 (now out of print). The recipe was reprinted in the Hungry Monk's later cookbook 'In Heaven with the Hungry Monk' (1997). Ian Dowding has since put his Original Recipe online because he is "pedantic about the correct version", and stated that his "pet hates are biscuit crumb bases and that horrible cream in aerosols".

There is some discussion over the best spelling for the pie's name, The Hungry Monk preferring "banoffi" over the more logical "banoffee" (to correspond with "toffee"). "Banoffy" is also sometimes used.

[edit] Preparation

The traditional way of preparing the condensed milk is to boil the unopened can for 3-5 hours to produce toffee, though this can be extremely dangerous as, if the water evaporates, the can may explode.

A considerably safer method is to completely immerse a number of cans in a large pan of water, bring it to a boil and then place in an oven set at 130-140C for 4-5 hours. The danger of all the water evaporating is reduced with this technique (in the closed environment of the oven capsule). The attraction of processing more cans than needed at one time is that processed cans start to crystallise their sugar content after being stored for a while and the result is a crunchy toffee paste. A drawback of oven processing is that the steam created in the oven will permeate any crusted-on burns in the oven and, if the pan is left in the oven overnight, will result in seepage of the dissolved residue to the floor of the oven and perhaps out of the oven door.