Easy Peasy Banoffee Pie

On Friday night, the lovely Ceri of Cucina Ceri (a great food blog full of recipes influenced by Paleo nutrition) cooked dinner for Adura (who has an inspiring blog that covers everything from exercise and nutrition to natural haircare) and I. The plan was to eat and watch Disney movies - yup, I know it's a pretty wild thing to do on a Friday night, but what can I say, that's just how we roll - but as we're all bloggers, we frequently interrupted 'Beauty and the Beast' and 'Tangled' to share blogging wisdom.
I left pretty inspired because they film videos and update their blogs frequently and I at that time had not updated my blog for a few weeks!

So as a result, I'm making it a small mission to start blogging regularly. You can expect to see new recipes and ignore enjoy my going ons at least once a week and maybe, just maybe, even more regularly. But don't hold me to that last bit!

Today's recipe is a classic dessert that is pretty easy to make. If my mum who is one of the world's most incompetent cooks, can nail this every time, then that is saying something. In my mum's defence, she is one of the most intelligent human beings in the world (no exaggeration - she is a doctor whowas third or something in the whole of Greece in her university entrance exams) but she has no interest in cooking whatsoever. She never has. Despite this, she has a pretty good repertoire of dishes she makes wonderfully for when we have guests.

The ease of Banoffee Pie is that the pastry case is ready, you can buy ready made whipped cream in a can with a nozzle thingie but I much prefer to make my own and slicing bananas, well, anybody can do that. So give it a go and I guarantee you it'll become your go-to dessert when you want to make something quick and amazing. I completely forgot how good it is till someone made one for a church lunch a few months ago and as soon as I remembered, I couldn't wait to make it again!

ps: I check the spelling of 'dessert' every time I write it to make sure it's referring to puddings rather dry land without water that gets really cold at night. This is particularly embarrassing for me since a) I LOVE desserts and I should know how to spell it and b) I pride myself on my spelling skills. Ah well, to paraphrase something I saw on Pinterest recently, it just wouldn't have been fair if God had made me as awesome as he did AND given me flawless spelling skills ;)

Ingredients
1 sweet pastry case (I bought mine at Waitrose but Sainsburys Taste the Difference range do a good one)
1 397g tin of condensed milk (Carnation also does the caramel - if you can find it, skip the step below for making caramel from condensed milk)
3 medium bananas, sliced
300ml double or whipping cream
1 tablespoon caster sugar

1 - To make caramel: I recommend you do this the night before. Place the tin of condensed milk in a pot, side down, cover with water and bring to the boil. Then reduce heat till water is simmering and leave it covered, for three hours. Please watch it and top up the water frequently so that it is never dry. (Apparently the tin will explode if the water dries up). I often make more than one tin at a time and just keep the spare unopened tins in the cupboard till I'm ready to use them again.

2 - Take it off the heat and leave it until it is completely cool. This might take a few hours. Now you have your caramel.

3 - To make whipped cream: Pour cold cream into a bowl. Add in the caster sugar. Using an electric mixer with the whisk beaters (if you have them) and starting on a low speed, whisk cream slowly increasing speed as it thickens until it is so stiff that you could turn the bowl upside down and it wouldn't fall out.

4 - Assembly: Place your sweet pastry case on a plate. Spread your tin of caramel evenly over the base of your case. Arrange your bananas over the caramel sauce. Finally, using a spatula, spread or pipe your whipped cream over the layer of bananas.