pies & tarts » maameemoomoo

I have a lot of ripe bananas at home.

ALWAYS.

So instead of the usual stuff eg; banana cakes, banana split etc.. i will try to come up with something different everytime when there are many gorgeous bananas at my disposal :P

This time, i picked…

Banoffee Pie!

From Wiki : Banoffee pie (also spelled banoffi, or banoffy) is an English pastry based dessert made from bananas, cream, toffee and boiled condensed milk (or dulce de leche), either on a pastry base or one made from crumbled biscuits and butter.

I’m thrilled to say, it was a brilliant choice!! *thick skin me* :P

First of all, i never knew boiling and simmering a can of condensed milk for 2 hours will result the above left! –> toffee / caramel!!! *suaku-me was wow-ed* ^_^

Now, making caramel will be much easier in the future! — Heee… the lazybum finally speaks up! –

The part which i absolutely detest is the pressing-the-crumbs-part. So bothersome! I really don’t enjoy it at all -_-

pssstt : i reckon because i suck at it, that’s why!

Other than the pressing the crumbs part, the rest was a breeze…

Seriously, if i can do it, so can you! ;)

Oh, another thing.. do make sure you’re not as stingy as i am when it comes to the butter part. I, is very stingy. I scrimped quite a bit on the butter (not good for the waistline!) which is not ideal at all.

Why?

Because you’ll get a crumbly base, which crumbles so easily that you might as well not cut it at all! :(

Another thing to take note is that, do chill the toffee for at least an hour before you place the bananas on it!

Smarty pants me skipped that chilling part.. because i thought, having an already-chilled-toffee which was refrigerated a day earlier would cut it but alas, not!

Sigh.

I ended up having a watery caramel-tery pie! ** see top left photo

Boo-boo!

So yeah, do take note of these 2 points if you’re making this addictive, heavenly and very sinful pie that is not meant for non-bananas-lovers.

. no scrimping on the butter!

and

. must chill for at least an hour after spreading the toffee on the pie crust!

With these 2 potential problems tackled, i’m very sure you’ll have a beautiful yet delicious pie! ;)

Banoffee Pie

good for 10″

250g digestive biscuit, crushed

150g unsalted butter, melted

1 can condensed milk

4 large bananas

200ml whipping cream

20g icing sugar – i like mine almost tasteless because of the toffee

20g dark chocolate, melted (optional)

1. Put the can of milk, unopened, in a large pan, cover with water, bring to the boil and boil for 2 hours, topping up with boiling water from the kettle as needed. Remove and leave to cool.

2. Put the digestives in a clean plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin. Melt the butter in a small pan, add the biscuits, mix, and press into the base of a 10″ tin with removable base. Chill in the fridge for 60 minutes.

3. Open the can of condensed milk, which will have turned to toffee. Spread this over the biscuit layer. Chill for at least an hour. Then, peel and thinly slice the bananas, and arrange in a layer over the toffee. Finally, whip the cream until thick and spread over the bananas. Decorate with dark chocolate ganache, if you like.

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p.s : the mind went blank when it came to styling. all i could think of was, i wanna EAT!!! LOL. i couldn’t be bothered where to place this and that and what. it was shoot, slice, shoot, eat :P

Green apples were abundant, and i’ve not tried making puff pastry something in my entire life. Instead of letting the apples go bad, i thought, why not make some super easy & quick apple pastry??!?

Coincidentally, we were at Cold Storage when the thought came about. Because everything was rather last minute, i grabbed a packet of frozen puff pastry there and then instead of making the it from the scratch. I was already going to make pizza dough manually for dinner, burdening myself with puff pastry making wasn’t such a good idea afterall!

At home, everything was prepared and timed properly — mainly for me to photograph the pastries! :P

Table was set, camera setting was adjusted, background boards and coloured papers were pinned upand even the apples were shot in advance. But what do you know! The pastries refused to brown! I estimated it to be baked in 15 minutes the most but they didn’t.

As the minutes ticked by, the sun was slowly going down.. and my heart, oh my heart…. let’s put it this way, i was totally restless! I was pacing up and down in front of the oven, checking for the pastries almost every minute and then running out to the balcony to check for the sun before heading to the kitchen again! It was crazy! i IS crazy! Hehehhehee… all in the name of photography and i’m just a home baker! lol.

Then finally… when the pastries were browned enough (another 20 minutes later), it was twilight!!! I almost wanted to pull all my hair out. Hahahahhahaahhaaa… I’m so not sure about you, but timing is everything for me, especially if i want my photos to turn out the way it is supposed to turn out to be. Natural lighting is extremely crucial. However, for my case, it’s much worst coz the best time for photography is from 5.30pm to 6.30 pm ONLY. Anytime before and after that… the photos don’t turn out as well.

Aihhssssss…

So, there u go.. my anyhow twilight photos :P

And another, using ‘Dinner’ setting. LOL.

Super easy & quick apple pastry

1 packet of frozen puff pastry

3 green apples, sliced thinly and soaked in salt water to prevent browning

2 tsbp sugar

sieved apricot jam with a little of hot water as glaze (optional)

Method

1. cut the puff pastry according to the size you desire

2. arrange the sliced apples on top

3. sprinkles sugar all over before sliding them in into the preheated oven at 180.

4. bake till brown – roughly 20-30 minutes.

5. brush sieved apricot jam all over and serve with ice cream or vanilla custard. BEST!

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Tart gone wrong :(

pies & tarts Comments Off

Nov 032008

It wasn’t supposed to look like this!

At least from what i saw.. it wasn’t supposed to!

But judging from the ingredients used, i must say.. i kinda expected it.

How can the cheese filling look that chocolate-y [in another word, chocolate in colour] when it does not contain any chocolate in it at all? Is it possible?

I went ahead anyway hoping to achieve that chocolate look but ended up being very disappointed no less.

Apart from baking in a 10″ tart pan instead of 9″ as instructed — does this explain why the filling didn’t reach the top? :P –, i also happened to have topping disaster day.

Initially, i thought of covering the whole tart with raspberries but the raspberries were selling for $6.90 a box! Now, $6.90 just to beautify my tart for the photos?!?

No way!

So it was back to using the whipping cream + marshmallows + almond bits + chocolate fudge idea, just as the book suggested. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be..

Because i was too lazy to whip the cream with machine for it was too little, i did it by hand instead.

Because my end result was not stiff peaked, my very helpful helper helped to whip some more without telling me which she ended up over beat! … until it watered :(((

It was my last few drops of whipping cream! *boo-hoo*

So, yeah.. now u know why i have such undesirable looking tart >.<

Chocolate crust + caramel cheese filling but naked on top with ugly pock marks! Eeee.. See already no mood to take anymore photos ah!

But funny as it may sound, the whole family loved it. As in, really love love love it lor… Especially beep. Not me though. It was pretty so-so to me :P

Apples overstock.

Thankfully, this apple crumble managed to use up 5. Heh.

I wasn’t that confident to bake this at first. Afterall, it was my first pie/tart bake, made from scratch. But it was good. Really!

However, next time, i’ll probably add a little sugar to the crust, which was sugar-less. And perhaps, for the apples, i’ll not boil it at all.. for more flavour. And and, i will not save my lemons too. A tablespoon of its goodness it is. At most, i’ll drink up the rest of the juice just like that. Hehehehe :P

Doesn’t sound so perfect afterall yeah?

But it was!

Do i sound convincing enough?

Ha!

p.s: do pardon me, heh. On ‘love’ high. My whole family [sisters, parents, do, re, mi etc] is here, well.. almost!