Banoffee Pie

Banoffee Pie

It’s another #TastyTuesday and this week I’m serving up Banoffee Pie. As with many of the British desserts I’ve posted here, if you are at all concerned with your cholesterol level, walk away now. Trust me, a little banoffee pie goes a long way.

Banoffee is very popular in the UK and you’ll find some variation of a banoffee dessert in pubs and restaurants all over the country. Banoffee cheesecake, cupcakes, tarts, sundaes . . . you get the idea.

This recipe is from my sister-in-law’s mother-in-law and it is delicious. Let me know if you make it and what you think!

Banoffee PIe

For the base:
100 grams/ 7 Tbsp butter, melted
250 grams/ .5 pounds digestive biscuits/graham crackers, crushed

For the caramel:
100 grams/ 7 Tbsp butter
100 grams/.5 cup soft dark brown sugar
397 gram/14 ounce can Carnation Condensed Milk

For the top:
4 small bananas
300 ml carton/1.25 cups whipping cream, lightly whipped
grated chocolate

1. You will need a 20cm loose-bottomed cake tin, greased, or if, like me, you don’t own such a thing, you can use an 8-inch pie plate.
2. Crush the biscuits or graham crackers and pour them in a bowl. Add the melted butter and mix in. Spoon the crumbs into the base and about halfway up the sides of the tin/plate to make a pie shell. Chill for 10 minutes.
3. Melt the butter and sugar for the caramel in a non-stick saucepan over a low heat, stirring constantly until the sugar has dissolved. Add the condensed milk and bring to a rapid boil for about a minute, stirring until it becomes a thick golden caramel. Spread the caramel over the base, cool and then chill for about 1 hour, until firm or ready to serve.
4. Slice the bananas and fold half of them into the softly whipped cream and spoon over the caramel. Decorate with the remaining bananas and finish with the grated chocolate.

Hey, It’s Tasty . . . Friday!

So… I’ve been experiencing some technical difficulties here at expatrimummy, hence the lack of posting, and though the issues aren’t quite ironed out I expect they will be soon. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, how about a Tasty Tuesday on Friday? Today we’re making apple crumble–an easy classic British dessert, similar to an American apple crisp, but probably with way more butter and sugar involved.

I don’t follow a specific recipe; my mother-in-law taught me how to make this many years ago before we were in-laws at all. It’s simple and a great comfort food for a cold winter’s night.

Apple Crumble

As many cooking apples (peeled, cored and sliced) as will fit into your chosen baking dish.
Equal parts white flour, white sugar, and about half as much butter (I generally use a cup of flour and sugar and either add more if I need it or freeze the excess).

1. Peel, core and slice your apples and put them in your baking dish.
2. Mix together the flour and sugar, then cut in the butter.
3. Sprinkle the flour mixture overtop the apples, then put in a 350°F oven and bake until done, about 30 minutes.

You can vary this by adding sugar to the apples if they’re particularly tart, or cinnamon, or add cinnamon to the topping or use brown sugar instead of white. My mother-in-law frequently adds blackberries to the apples if she’s got them to hand. Make it your own or enjoy as is. Serve it with ice cream or custard (we don’t make our own custard from scratch; we use Bird’s Custard Powder made up with milk and sugar in the microwave).

 

Tasty Tuesday Repeat: Christmas Cake

As it is the festive season and I’m feeling a bit tired and unoriginal, I’m giving you, dear readers, a repeat post from 2011. The Mysteries of Christmas Cake–Unveiled (Sort of). Enjoy!

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Ah, the Christmas cake, or “fruitcake” as it is fondly (and not so fondly) known. In the UK, they call it “rich” fruitcake, though the reason escapes me a bit–I think it’s because there is more dried fruit in it than in a “regular” fruitcake.

Now in the States, we abhor the fruitcake. We love to hate it, don’t we? I’ve never tried an American fruitcake and I don’t believe I ever will–all those green and red and orange candied fruits look, well, pretty gross. This is one thing British fruitcake has going for it–none of that scary stuff. But I have to say, it’s scary in its own right. My husband made the Christmas cake this year, a bit late (he waited until November when ideally it would’ve been done in early- to mid-June).

Here’s what the batter looked like pre-baking:

The blue paper is wrapped around the outer edge of the pan to keep it from burning. In Simon’s family, it’s traditional to use this particular blue paper (it’s actually a bag from the pharmacist saved year-after-year for the purpose, don’t ask me why). The paper is tied on with a string, also saved from year-to-year, and the batter must be stirred by the children of the family so they can make a wish and for good luck. (Perhaps they wish for a good excuse to not eat the Christmas cake.)

After all that, the cake is baked for a good four or five hours (the thing is enormous) and then set aside to cool and be iced with marzipan and tucked away for Christmas Day. I’ll post a photo of the end result here in a bit.

So what goes in a Christmas cake, exactly? Here’s a recipe that would have been used in large manor houses round about 1845:

• 2 lb. mixed fruit (dried)
• generous 1.5 lb. flour and butter
• scant 1/2 lb. peel (lemon and orange)
• 10 eggs
• 1/2 lb. treacle

Cream the butter and whisk the eggs. Add flour and eggs to the butter and mix well until a stiff batter is formed. Add in the fruit and treacle. Mix the cake by hand (it will burn out a modern electric mixer). Turn it into a well-greased 9-inch tin and bake in a moderate oven (140 degrees Celsius/280 Fahrenheit) for about 5-6 hours. Wrap the tin in several layers of paper to stop the edges of the cake from burning.

Anyone want to give it a try and let me know how it turns out? We bought rolls of prepared marzipan to lay over the finished cake; for a view of what a finished product might look like, check here (ours looks nothing like these).

For a really large cake, the recipe recommends 10 lbs. of fruit, 8 lbs. of flour, 8 lbs. of butter, 2 lbs. of candied peel, about 50 eggs, and a little treacle. (If you make that one, do let me know. And send pictures.)

Parkin Cake

Parkin Cake

Here’s another recipe I pulled out of a magazine over a year ago with a view to making and sharing on the blog. Parkin cake is, apparently, a tradition in the North of England and not the South, where we live—which may explain why I’d never heard of it before. It dates back to about 1728 and is associated with Guy Fawkes night, or bonfire night, when Brits celebrate the man who tried to bring down the government by blowing up the Houses of Parliament. He failed and was hung, drawn, and quartered. Ouch.

Parkin cake was known as the cake of the poor, because it used oats—the staple grain of the poor—as one of its main ingredients and was traditionally made in early November, after the oats were harvested, which is probably why it became associated with bonfire night, the 5th of November. Essentially, it’s a gingerbread with oatmeal in it and makes a tasty snack on a cold autumn night.

Parkin Cake
Serves 12-15

100g / 4 oz / .5 cup butter
100g / 4 oz / .5 cup soft dark brown sugar
1 tbsp black treacle/molasses
4 tbsp golden syrup/corn syrup
225 g / 8 oz / 2.5 cups oatmeal
100 g / 4 oz / 7/8 cup self-raising flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda/baking soda
pinch of salt
2 tsp ground ginger
2 beaten eggs
2 tbsp milk

1. Preheat oven to gas mark 2/ 150°C / 130°C fan / 300°F.
2. Melt butter, brown sugar, black treacle/molasses and 4 tbsp golden syrup/corn syrup in a pan over low heat.
3. Let the butter and molasses mixture cool a little, then stir it into a bowl with the oatmeal,  self-raising flour, bicarbonate of soda/baking soda, pinch of salt and ground ginger.
4. Mix in the eggs and milk. Spoon into a greased and lined 20.5cm/8 in square cake pan and bake for about 1 to 1.5 hours, until golden.
5. Allow the cake to cool in the tin, then turn out. Wrap well in greaseproof/waxed paper and store in a container for up to three days.

Enjoy!

Rock Cakes

Any Brits reading this blog will be familiar with rock cakes—and I have to admit the first time I heard of them, many years ago, I didn’t think they sounded particularly appetizing. And indeed, they can turn into the consistency of rock if you leave them in a tin and forget about them for a few days. They are also sometimes called rock buns and are apparently a favorite with children, who traditionally have them with their “tea,” or evening meal, my online research tells me. They are also, allegedly, Harry Potter’s favorite tea time treat. The recipe became popular in WWII, when it was an economical treat usually made with oatmeal rather than flour, as it was more readily available.

Rock Cakes
Makes approximately 15

2 cups flour
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons sugar
4 ounces softened butter
1 cup currants
2 beaten eggs
1/4 cup milk

1. Preheat the oven to 350°C/180°F.

2. Combine the flour, baking powder and sugar in a bowl. Cut in the butter until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Stir in the currants, eggs and milk, mixing to form a stiff batter.

3. Drop rounded tablespoons of batter onto a well-greased baking sheet about 2 inches apart. Bake until golden brown in color–about 15 minutes.

4. Cool them on a cooling rack.