Binging with Babish: Banoffee Pie from Love, Actually

banoffee

pie no thank you thank god it would have broken my heart if you said yes okay that's lucky hey guys welcome back to

binging

with

babish

where this week I'm ending the year on a bit of a note easier with the Love Actually benefit cake with my old enemy of anaphylactic shock, the banana, but we don't have to deal with them, but first we have to make dulce de leche which of course can be bought at the store, but If we do it ourselves we can control the color, flavor and most importantly consistency, the only thing we need is a can of sweetened condensed milk whose label we have removed and which we are going to completely immerse in a bain-marie or I said immerse completely in a bain-marie here we go and now I'm going to cover this, bring it to a boil and let it simmer for between an hour and a half to three and a half hours.

You'll notice that I have two cans boiling here, that's because I'm going to take one out at the 1 and a half hour mark to show you the difference time can have on the resulting dulce de leche, so I have a second that can hear me boiling for two more hours before carefully removing it and placing it on a rack to cool completely and I mean completely unless the thought of boiling hot caramel explodes in your face with Christmas cheer and, as you can see, the hour version and a half has a nice pale gold color and a drizzle consistency in a bowl, perfect for ice cream or apple cider or to play the 3 and a half hour version, however, it has a deep golden color and a thick, spreadable consistency, perfect for pies, charity pies or for playing, then the next thing we have to deal with is the crust, the most popular form of which is graham. biscuit but since Vanna has some UK sourced cakes I am going to follow Mary Berry's recipe and use digestive biscuits which are almost the same as graham crackers, they are a little harder and a little sweeter but oh so Of course, if you've already seen the show, you must have guessed that we're making ours with a little help from a recipe by Gemma Stafford in the bowl of a food processor and 36 grams of whole wheat flour 85 grams of caster sugar a teaspoon each of kosher salt and baking powder, all of which we're just going to pulse a few times to combine and make sure they're all nice and smooth and then we're going to cut them into cubes into a stick of cold unsalted butter and we're going to mash them together. with the dry ingredients trying not to spray too much on us until the butter is fully incorporated and the mixture looks like dry sand and then we'll turn it into wet sand by adding 1/4 cup whole milk and then just letting the processor run until It forms a rough ball of dough that we will treat almost like a pie dough by wrapping it in plastic wrap and letting it chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes, letting the gluten relax and letting the butter harden, then whatever is left is

love

.

What you want to do is unwrap it and sprinkle it lightly with all-purpose flour or whole wheat flour. If you're really a fiber junkie, then we'll roll everything out to about 1/4 inch thickness, reflow it as needed, and cut it into rounds. cutouts that can be re-aged and trimmed and then to give them the authentic look I bought a cookie typeface which, while it had the correct font, was a little too big so I ended up having to hyphenate my word to make it they look more alike. digestive biscuits that digestive biscuits yes, we will do what you say, prick or score your biscuits, we will bake them in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for 18 to 22 minutes until golden and crisp, letting them cool completely and then store them in a container strangely perfect-sized airtight container until we're ready to use them, which is now because we're making a crust out of them the same way we would graham crackers, pulverizing a handful of digestive crackers until we're down to about a cup and a half of digestive biscuit crumbs to which we are going to add a stick of melted unsalted butter or the fat of your preference, pulsing the machine until the mixture looks like very wet sand that you can take with your fingers and press to form small pancakes that keep its shape but not with conviction, then we are going to press our digestive biscuit and butter mixture into the bottom of a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom, and optionally we will have the help of a wide, shallow pan until the crust is pressed upwards. flush with the sides of the pan and it's nice and flat and smooth on the bottom, then we're going to place this on a rimmed baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 7 minutes until it starts to darken and becomes fragrant.

Then we're going to let our digestive biscuit crust cool completely before we even think about filling them. Once we are ready to fill, I will heat our dulce de leche in a shallow water bath which I brought to a simmer making our previously thick and stubborn dulce de leche thin and spreadable and we will spread it evenly to make sure Make sure it covers the bottom of the crust and then we need to wrap this guy tightly in plastic wrap and let it rest. four hours in the refrigerator and finally it's banana time. I'm going to take some precautionary measures in case I'm a little more allergic than I remember and then I'll peel and cut the bananas into maybe half inch rounds and after we get our freshly solidified dulce de leche it's time to sprinkle it with bananas , do this however you want.

I don't care, there is literally no wrong way to do this, but what you can do wrong is what I'm about to do. Do what you can see them very thoughtfully deciding whether or not they should pour the 1 1/2 hour dulce de leche over the bananas. I thought it might look pretty and add a nice difference in texture and as you can see after agonizing. For a few minutes I decided to do the wrong thing, and as you'll see later, it ends up turning the

banoffee

pie into something of a disaster, so skip that step and yours will turn out perfect.

Now we're just going to make a quick whipped cream by combining about two cups of heavy cream, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and a generous tablespoon of vanilla extract in a large bowl using an electric hand mixer to whip it to semi-stiff peaks, so that It is thick enough to maintain its soft shape. just enough to make it palatable and then on top of the beneficial cake you put a decorative sprinkle of cocoa powder and as I mentioned as long as you don't try to be too inventive and pour super sticky dulce de leche on top. Your bananas should come out clean and perfect, but even with my mistake, they're still pretty good.

Now all that's left to do is cut them and serve them. I recommend doing this with a knife under hot tap water to get nice clean cuts. and as I've already made very clear at this point, I'm allergic to bananas so I can't try this bad flavor of cake right now, so I decided to invite my

love

ly girlfriend Jess to try it for me. Now I think these bananas look great because I don't. Wow, that's cute and it's one of my favorite Christmas movies. It's a chick flick but it's also a Christmas classic. I think you cried at the end.

I think you're in love with Colin Firth too. What the hell? Yeah so I decided to invite my lovely girlfriend Jess, come try it for me honey they look great look wait a minute it's those bananas you know I don't like bananas oh that's something sweet it's one of my favorite unshared movies, but it's also classic, I mean. You cried when we saw it. I also remember you saying you were in love with Colin Firth.