Sunday 8 July 2012

Banoffee Pie







Ingredients
2 bananas
397g condensed milk (or dulche du leche)
300g chocolate chip biscuits
35g unsalted butter
200ml double cream
giant chocolate buttons (or just chocolate) These were on special offer so...

Method
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
In a pan on a medium heat, pour in the condensed milk and continuously stir until thickened. This should take about 20 minutes. Even if it looks wrong, continue stirring (and take off the heat).
Bash the chocolate chip biscuits until you have crumbs and stir in the melted butter.
Compress the biscuit-butter combination into a baking tin, and bake in the oven for 10 minutes until the base has hardened. When it has cooked, take out of the oven and leave to cool down.
Slice the bananas into about 1 cm thick.
Pour the cooled caramel onto the biscuit base, cover with chocolate chip buttons and arrange the sliced bananas on top.
Whip the cream into soft peaks and layer onto the banoffee pie.
Sprinkle a few more chocolate buttons on the cream to decorate, and leave in the fridge to chill.

Variations
Orange zest in the cream and caramel, and orange biscuits in the base.
You could melt the chocolate if you wanted to evenly use it.
Using softened icecream instead of cream.
Using custard instead of cream and sponge instead of biscuits to makea banoffee trifle.

Monday 2 July 2012

Thyme Shortbread

Crumbly, rich and fragrant- delicious!

Ingredients
250g plain flour
130g butter
100g caster sugar (if you want an extremely fine shortbread, substitute with icing sugar)
a couple of sprigs of thyme

Method
Mix the flour and sugar together in a cold glass bowl.
Pull the thyme leaves off and rub to release the flavour.
Add the thyme to the flour and sugar and mix.
Dice the cold butter and rub into the flour until you have a crumb mixture.
Cover with clingfilm and leave in the fridge to harden up.
After 20 minutes, preheat the oven to 200 degrees, and ten minutes after that, butter a tin for the shortbread.
Take the crumb mixture out of the fridge, and compress into the buttered tin.
Flatten the mixture so the shortbread doesn't rise, but don't push it down too much or it will become quite crisp when cooked.
After the shortbread has been in the oven for 10 minutes, turn the temperature down to 180 degrees, and leave to cook until golden and hard. This should take about 25 minutes.
Leave the shortbread to cool down and eat.
Store in an airtight container for 3 days.

Serve with clotted cream and a sprig of thyme.

Tips
Replace thyme with other flavours like: tea, mint, orange, chilli.