The Tale Of A Fantastic Dessert

It's widely believed that banoffee pie was created in 1972 in a restaurant called The Hungry Monk. It's the invention of the restaurant owner Nigel Mackenzie and his chef Ian Dowding. Dowding came up initially with the idea after coming across an American dessert called "Blum's Coffee Toffee Pie" which was similar but with a coffee taste and no bananas. Apparently Dowding didn't like the dish much though as it rarely set correctly, either being too hard or too runny.

Together they adapted the idea to toffee and bananas and made up the word "banoffi", which has now turned into "banoffee" and is now part of the English language used to describe anything that tastes of banana and toffee. So they added the new Banoffee Pie to their menu and found it became so popular that diners would actually request table bookings only if this particular dessert was on the menu. In fact, it became so popular that they simply could not remove it from the menu.

Once the word of banoffee pie got out it wasn't long before other restaurants were starting to imitate. After just a few years there were people saying that banoffee pie was being served on the other side of the world in Australia! Nowadays the dessert is served in restaurants all over the world.

Below is a quick and simple recipe for creating your own delicious pie! Ingredients

3 bananas, packet of digestive biscuits (for the base), 60g butter, 350ml double cream, 1 tablespoon icing sugar, 100g dark chocolate, 397g tin of caramel

1. Crush the biscuits into crumbs. I find the easiest way of doing this is to pop them into a sandwich bag or wrap them in cling film and crush them with a rolling pin). Then melt the butter in a saucepan, turn the oven on to gas mark 4. Once the butter has melted mix the biscuit crumbs with the butter.

2. Pour the biscuit mix into a 20cm (ish) pie tin and press into an even layer to create the base.

3. Put the base into the oven for 10 or so minutes. This is to allow it to lightly toast giving the base more crunch. Keep an eye on it to ensure it doesn't burn, and once toasted remove and let cool.

4. When the base is cool pour the caramel over the top evenly. Place in the fridge for an hour.

5. After the hour chilling, remove the pie and slice the bananas. Create the banana layer.

6. Whip the cream and icing sugar to get it nice and thick, and then create the final unhealthy layer over the bananas.

7. For the final touch you can either grate some chocolate over the top or melt it and drizzle it over the cream. Whichever takes your fancy!