“Do you do Banoffee Pie?” That simple question from a client set the whole thing off.
Of COURSE we do Banoffee Pie – we’re caterers and (more importantly) food lovers. That’s our job. What I had never done however was make my own toffee. Gooey, rich, creamy, completely decandent toffee – also known in some circles as dulce de leche. I had read somewhere about boiling condensed milk to make it, so did a little more research…
Time for a small aside here: evaporated versus condensed milk. Both come in tins. What’s the difference? I had never really considered the question. I had vague memories of my dad putting one of the two in his coffee when I was a child (evaporated, I think), and me thinking the milk tasted vile. And my mum buying Eagle Brand something or other for baking, and it being sickly sweet.
So here’s the difference:
Evaporated milk is milk which has had about 60% of the water removed via evaporation. It is then homogenized, rapidly chilled, fortified with vitamins and stabilizers, packaged, and finally sterilized. The high heat process gives it a bit of a caramelized flavor, and it is slightly darker in color than fresh milk. The evaporation process naturally concentrates the nutrients and the calories, so evaporated versions are more calorie-laden and nutritious than their fresh counterparts.
Sweetened condensed milk goes through less processing than evaporated milk. 60% of the water has also been removed from condensed milk, but it differs in that sugar has been added. Condensed milk contains 40 to 45 percent sugar and is very high in calories.
It’s the latter, calorie laded tinned milk that’s used to make toffee for Banoffee Pie, Millionaire’s Shortbread, and other sweet treats. There are two main ways to make this kind of toffee:
Cook condensed milk with butter and brown sugar
Boil condensed milk in the cans, unopened
Route #2 seemed much more interesting, almost like an experiment in alchemy. Taking one substance and turning it into another. I had to try it, despite the warnings about exploding cans and the the resulting difficult to clean messes on ceilings. If that happened it would be a much needed excuse to clean the ceiling!
But I did consult quite a number of sources before trying it. One must be prepared.
The process is simple: take a tin (or more) of sweetened condensed milk (remove the label first), put it into a suitably sized saucepan, and cover the tin(s) completely with water. Bring it to the boil and keep it at a gentle boil for 2.5 – 3 hours. Top up the water as necessary to keep the tin(s) covered or close to it. Remove from water and leave to cool. The finished, unopened product can be used when cooled or put into the larder for another time.
3 hours later I removed the very hot tins from the water and left them to cool. To ensure quality control I opened one of the slightly warm tins and the girl and I sampled some of it over ice cream. It worked. Big time. I felt the same sort of excitement I feel when I bake bread – into the oven goes a fairly unassuming pale, sticky ball of dough; out comes a much bigger, browner, incredibly fragrant finished product. Alchemy.
I took it to work the next day and, still quite excited, showed it to our staff. Our Brazilian employee suggested cooking it in pressure cookers. It’s how they do it in Brazil and apparently takes only 30 mins. He tried some of it on homemade scones (it was a Friday after all) and was pretty much in heaven.
So the Banoffee Pie… a chocolatey digestive crust topped with the aforementioned toffee, thin slices of ripe sweet bananas, a generous layer of cream, and topped with chocolate sauce. For you North Americans it’s like banana cream pie but better. Dead easy to make but not a dessert for the faint hearted. It’s rich and just simply decadent. Even those with a sweet tooth will attest to that.
Love the way the toffee slowly oozes out
But who says there’s anything wrong with decadent? I certainly do not! Decadence in manageable portions is absolutely fine in my book. I wouldn’t recommend eating a whole Banoffee Pie at once unless you are on a good dental plan, but a thin slice now and again could be very good for the soul. Or for a special occasion. Or as a means of using up ripe bananas… ok, that last one is a fairly flimsy justification.
The clients tasted the Banoffee Pie and I think it’s safe to say they liked it. And will be having it at their wedding in July. The leftovers went home and the man and the girl concurred (as did I). The boy, on the other hand, said (and I quote) “Bananas, yuck! I’m out of here!” before leaving the table. Oh well, you can’t please everyone. It just meant there was more left for the rest of us the next day!
A rich, decadent combination of toffee, bananas, cream, and chocolate. Divine!
Ingredients
Crust
400g digestive biscuits
35g cocoa
150g butter (melted)
Filling
600g toffee or dulce de leche (you can either make your toffee from condensed milk as decribed above, or buy it pre-made)
3 medium bananas (ripe)
Topping
500ml double or whipping cream
Garnish
chocolate shavings or curls, chocolate sauce, or sifted cocoa (a small amount for garnishing)
Directions
1
Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius.
Butter and line a 25cm tart tin with removable bottom.
2
Crush the digestive biscuits, either in a food processor or in a zip-lock style bag using a rolling pin, wine bottle, or other heavy object. Add the cocoa and mix well. Add the melted butter and mix until well combined and the mixture holds together when squeezed in your hand.
Press the mixture onto the bottom and sides of your pan, as evenly as possible. The sides should be 3/4cm - 1cm thick.
3
Bake the crust for 20 minutes. The air will smell warmly chocolatey. Remove from oven and leave to cool.
4
Heat the toffee/Dulce de Leche in the microwave or in a double boiler until just warm. You just want to make it easier to pour and smooth, not get it boiling hot.
Put the toffee into the cooled tart crust and smooth with a spatula.
5
Slice the bananas fairly thinly and lay them over the toffee in concentric circles. You will have some overlap - distribute the banana slices as evenly as possible.
Press gently on the bananas so they sink into the toffee a little.
6
Whip the cream and spread over the bananas. If you wish you can use a palette knife to make the cream all swirly or billowy.
7
Garnish the pie with your chosen garnish - chocolate shavings or curls, chocolate sauce, or some sifted cocoa.
8
Refrigerate for 3-4 hours before serving. This is best eaten within a day of making it.
When I was thinking about how to present this post I realised that I was likely to come across as rather fickle. Or as I prefer to think about it, “taking a balanced view”. Seeing both sides of the issue. Yes, both of those sound much better than “fickle”. More mature & grown up (although I still sometimes laugh when I think of myself as a grownup).
You see, a while ago I wrote about the joys of experimenting with food and cooking – largely because I was sharing with you a dish that I’d developed on the fly. In contrast, this new post was to be all about a recipe that just works so why mess with it… A recipe that’s all over the blogosphere and I totally understand why. About NOT reinventing the wheel, so to speak (sorry, management consultant speak from my past life coming through).
How do I rectify these two competing philosophies?
Well, in thinking about it further and having a bit of a discussion with myself at about 5:30 this morning (yes, with advancing age I find I do talk to myself more and more, plus there was nobody to talk to at that time of morning) (I also find I digress a lot more, hence all these damn parentheses), I came to the conclusion that I can live with these competing philosophies without fear of self combusting. Different situations call for different approaches, that’s all. Where would we be without experimenting, lucky accidents, or things not going quite as planned? Still stuck mid stone-age I think. And bored silly. But on the other hand when you have a recipe (for example) that you like, that others like, and that just WORKS, then why mess with it?
I will say up front that I hate being cold. I also hate being too hot. I’m a Libra – I don’t go for extremes. But being cold, really, I cannot stand it and it makes me quite grumpy. People always say to me “but you’re Canadian, you must be used to the cold.” I generally have two responses to this point:
I’m from the wet part of Canada, not the cold part. Where I’m from 2 inches of snow causes the whole city to come to a complete standstill and become the laughingstock of the rest of the country!
Houses in Canada are generally centrally heated & well insulated.
On that second point, I never even considered the whole insulation thing until the man and I spent 2 years in Japan. Neither central heating nor insulation feature in the majority of Japanese homes or apartments (or at least they didn’t 20 years ago). During our 2 winters there I discovered that:
There was no need to keep food in the fridge as our kitchen (which we affectionately called “the meat locker”) was plenty cold enough
Furry toilet seat covers helped to combat that uncomfortable yet little known syndrome called “popsicle butt” (we didn’t have one of those posh toilets with heated seats)
A fun pastime was to make lovely finger drawings on the thin layer of ice that formed inside the windows
Frostbitten toes hurt like hell
You get the picture – it was cold. I also discovered how completely amazing Japanese bathtubs are and how a proper bath can keep you warm for hours.
And so now I find myself in the UK living in a slowly crumbling Victorian terraced house with single glazed windows and not the best insulation. Layers and a space heater are necessary when it gets cold, but it’s bearable and only a little bit like camping. That’s until the heating goes on the blink, which happens about once every 2 years. The most recent occurrence being this past weekend.
Aaahhhh memories of summer birthday parties. Long warm sunny days, water fights, sun kissed skin, ice-cream cakes, jumping on the trampoline, and sunshine. It’s the sunshine that really sticks in my mind – that and the ice cream cakes my mum would make. But unfortunately these memories aren’t of my own birthday parties; instead they’re my brother’s, my cousins’, and more recently my boy’s. He and I both think he has the best deal in our family when it comes to his birthday month.
I am an autumn baby. Not too far in to the autumn mind you, but autumn nonetheless.
Memories of my own birthday parties tend to involve rain, or if not rain then at least clouds and generally gloomy weather. Growing up on the Canadian west coast, I could predict the arrival of the autumn rains like clockwork: generally they arrived about a week before my birthday. Ho hum. Cue indoor birthday parties; definitely no water fights or ice cream cakes. I’m not blaming my parents or anything – I count backwards 9 months from my birthday and I totally get it. I just never liked being an October baby.
However, all is not dark and depressing. No, not at all. I think I am slowly coming to terms and even embracing where my birthday falls in the calendar. Perhaps it’s living in the UK where autumns can be quite pleasant (this year we had record high temperatures in October). Perhaps my long weekend in the Piedmont last October (a mere 4 days after my birthday) made me realise that early autumn’s harvest really does rock. Perhaps my ever advancing age brings wisdom and tolerance (I realised this morning that I am by all definitions – gulp – officially middle aged). Or perhaps it was the absolutely fabulous meal the man made for my birthday this year.
It wasn’t a frou-frou or haute cuisine type of meal. That’s just not us. Instead it was rustic, colourful, fresh, and full of flavour. That’s definitely more our style. The meal was simply:
A huge bowl of grilled vegetables, all from our allotment, with good olive oil & balsamic.
Another year has passed and the girl has just had another birthday. Where exactly does the time go? I know people say that all the time but I’m really feeling it at the moment. Seriously. I distinctly remember writing this post about her pink & sparkly birthday cake, and here I am again with another birthday (and cake) to write about, looking for fresh material!
A princess cake for my princess
The girl is 5 now, which seems very grown up. Cue mummy moment…
She seems to be getting taller by the minute and is in big school now. She’s learning letters and sounds, and is building models of the Eiffel Tower at school. And she is as fashion conscious as ever. She has eschewed the normal school uniform sweatshirt in favour of a plain red cardigan because she doesn’t feel the sweatshirts look as nice as a smart button-down cardigan. And of course choosing the right hairstyle/accessories on any given day takes consideration. On Halloween night it took an absolute age to get her costumed up, as she just couldn’t decide what to wear under the costume. Yes, under the costume. Apparently it mattered! I see the humour in it now; I didn’t see it quite so much then. Continue reading On a Princess Cake for a Princess
This is the tale of a boy and his quest to catch a really big fish.
It was an idyllic summer holiday for this particular boy and his sister. A long airplane journey, time in Vancouver catching up with grandparents, aunties, uncles & two particularly adorable cousins, then two weeks at the other grandma and grandpa’s house in a little town by the seaside (including a whole week without parents). The boy couldn’t wait to get there. Beaches, lakes, boats, a huge back garden, loads of attention, and fishing. Kid heaven. Did I mention the fishing? Fishing was way up on the priority list. The boy was determined to catch some fish, and big fish at that.
And so the quest began. I’m not sure grandpa had quite anticipated the boy’s serious enthusiasm for fishing.
First he caught some trout during a day out on the rowboat with dad and grandpa. Grandpa rowed. The boy caught 2 fish. The dad caught but quickly lost 5 fish (one of which was apparently gargantuan).
Then came the cod. After a few days of trying, jackpot. 5 cod of various types were hauled in. That evening his parents were given a rather long treatise on different types of cod and their characteristics.
And then, the salmon. The boy’s parents had been cast adrift without their children for a week. It was tough, but they managed. After yet another dinner out (consoling themselves of course), they arrived back to a missed phone call from the boy with the message, “you’d better phone him”. With visions of blood, gore & tragedy in their heads they quickly rang him, and were told about THE FISH. In great detail, with all the excitement and enthusiasm possessed by a 9 year old boy whose summer dreams had just come true. This was not just any fish, but a 25 lb. spring salmon. To say the boy was excited would be a serious understatement. The photos (proudly snapped by grandma) quickly arrived over email so the parents could see just how big this beast was. And it was big. An hour later the boy caught them on Skype and they could see the excitement in his face, in his movements, in the way he could not stop talking. His parents developed rather large smiles on their faces too.
What can I say? Life has been busy to the power of 10. I have been cooking – a LOT – but having the time to set up & take photos and even begin to think about writing has been a non-existent luxury. So I’ve had to attempt to let go of the guilt that hangs over me when I can’t do everything I want/feel I need to do, and just put the blog aside for a while.
But I’m back. Or at least I’m trying to be! I spent days racking my brain to decide on the best topic for this post. Something sweet? Savoury? Yeasty? Barbecued? Summery? Cheesy? Creamy? Salty? Citrusy? Chocolatey? I had endless options, really. However, I finally decided on something simple and… well, tarty. Or tartful. Or whatever word is roughly defined as: on the topic of tarts.
Light chocolate cream & summer berries in a buttery shortbread crust
I have always said that science isn’t really my thing. In school and then university I liked history, humanities, social sciences, and quite liked math(s) even, but oh no, not science. I did one year of physics in high school which I think is more than enough torture for your average human. Biology – I did that one all the way through first year university. But no chemistry. None. Which is ironic for 2 reasons:
The man studied chemistry and indeed has a degree in it.
As a caterer I spend a good proportion of my life cooking and baking. And what is cooking and baking but science? Food chemistry to be more precise.
Isn’t life funny that way? A self proclaimed science phobe paired up with a science lover, working every day with the chemistry of food. Which is fascinating science in my mind (though thankfully from what I can tell there is no physics involved). I love experimenting with recipes, trying new techniques, changing methods used when cooking for a family to methods necessary when cooking for 100 or more people. It’s about taking a problem or question, developing a hyphthesis or two about how it might work or could be done, and then testing it.
I recently gave myself a problem to solve: develop a fresh lemon curd cream filling for a large tart (that would be covered with fresh strawberries) that would hold its structure (more or less) when sliced. Simple, no? Well, sort of…
It all started with the bread. The freshly baked sourdough – crunchy on the outside, chewy & holey on the inside.
The daily bread
No, on second thought it started with the mushrooms – the giant flat mushrooms left over from a weekend event. Or was it the asparagus, freshly picked just a few days before? No, if we’re looking at it in terms of length of time said items had been in the kitchen begging to be used, then it was the mushrooms first. Then the asparagus. And the bread was the clincher that brought it all together.
One of my favourite movies of all time is Chocolat. It is one of the few non-kid DVDs that we own. The same goes for the book – I absolutely love it and it’s one of the few books I won’t give back to a charity shop. When much loved novels are made into movies I’m almost always disappointed in the result, but for me this is the exception. It’s hard to go wrong with a combination of gorgeous scenery, a captivating story, fantastic food scenes that make one want to immerse one’s entire face in a pan of molten chocolate (and possibly run off to be a chocolatier), and Johnny Depp.
One of the recurring themes in both book and movie is that of abstinence versus indulgence (during the season of Lent), with the reader/viewer being made to ponder which makes the better person. Is it one who abstains and denies oneself to purify the soul, or one who “indulges” and embraces a moment, a sensation, a flavour. Some chocolate…
Did I mention Johnny Depp? Oh yes, I see I did. Oh good.
When it comes to food I’ve never seen the point of self-denial, and being completely non-religious I have never done Lent. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not talking about complete uncontrolled gluttony. That’s something completely different. What I mean is that I can’t see the point of denying yourself something just because it might not be very good for you, or is seen as just far too indulgent. I’m a big believer in balance and moderation, so I figure if you want something then have it – just don’t go too crazy. It would seem to be a much healthier approach compared to denial followed by overindulgence (which is so often the result of that approach).
After watching Chocolat for the umpteenth time the other night, I’ve come to think that the world would be a much happier place if we all followed a Chocolat inspired philosophy of life. It would not be based on abstinence and denial; it would definitely be based on living in the moment, embracing life, enjoying food (as opposed to being scared of it) and of course mandatory portions of good quality chocolate each day. And if this philosophy needs some figureheads, then I propose Johnny Depp and Juliet Binoche as the benevolent beings overseeing it all.
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