Easy No Bake Banoffee Pie, A Classic British Dessert

This banoffee pie is a quick and easy dessert that will always impress. It is made using very simple and easy to find ingredients. It will become a firm favourite in no time.

What is a banoffee pie?

It is all in the name, ‘ban’ obviously stands for banana and then there is the ‘offee’ for toffee, it does not stand coffee (apparently there was somewhere online that added coffee which is kind of weird).

The toffee though is honestly it is more caramel in consistency than toffee, but, I think the flavour is more toffee so maybe that is why it is named that way. Although it could also be that banoffee sounds a lot better than banaramel, bit of a tongue twister that one.

This banana toffee pie is then topped with whipped cream.

There are many variations to this pie, whether is it the base which can be either pastry or biscuit based or maybe it is the toffee which could be a homemade caramel or the more commonly used dulce de leche.

Depending on how much work you want to put into this dessert will decide which base or filling you choose to make. For this recipe I have kept it very simple by using a ginger biscuit base along with a tinned dulce de leche.

What is the difference between a banoffee pie and a banana cream pie?

These are actually two different desserts lets look at the key difference and also some of their similarities:

• Banoffee pie
  • Created in the 1970’s in the UK
  • Has a soft caramel/toffee filling
  • Biscuit or pastry base
  • Cream topping
• Banana cream pie
  • Created in the 19th century in the United States
  • Has a pastry cream/ custard filling
  • Mainly uses a pastry base but can be biscuit based too.
  • Topped with whipped cream

What is Dulce de Leche?

I always thought dulce de leche was Italian well that is totally wrong. For one it isn’t even Italian it is Spanish and two it isn’t from Europe I don’t think…

There are many origin stories that vary from Napoleon to the Philippines and Indonesia. But no matter where it came from it is the South Americans that have made it their own and where we see it most today.

Dulce de Leche translates to sweet from milk or candy made from milk. It is made by heating sweetened milk or sugar and milk. There are different recipes out there although the most common way that I see is by heating tins of condensed milk. This can be quite dangerous if they are left unattended so I don’t really recommend doing this. But don’t worry you can now buy tins of dulce de leche from condensed milk companies, making this step even simpler.

Ingredients and tools

How to make banoffee pie

Base

Begin by crushing the ginger biscuits into crumbs, this can be done in a few different ways. The easiest would be to use a food processor so if you have one use it if not then you can place the cookies into a plastic freezer bag and bash them with a rolling pin.

Melt the butter and add this to the cookie crumbs and either pulse it for a few seconds or give it a mix in a bowl.

Add the cookie crumb to a greased 9×9 pie dish. Spread it out evenly and gently press the base in to firm it up, I like to go up the sides a little too. It doesn’t need to be overly firmed in this base firms up really well when it cools, plus it makes it hard to cut into if its too hard.

Place the base into the fridge for at least thirty minutes to cool.

Fill and serve

Once the base has cooled pour in the dulce de leche, it tends to be quite runny so to it will spread itself, if it needs help you can gently tilt the pie dish.

Take the bananas and slice them around half an inch thick. If you do it on a slight angle you will get bigger pieces.

Layer them over the top of the dulce de leche three bananas should give you around two layers of banana.

Lastly whip the cream, use an electric whisk to make this easier. You can add vanilla extract and or powdered sugar to it if you like but I have found that this dessert is sweet enough and packed full of flavour so it isn’t really needed.

Spoon the cream over the top of the pie and spread evenly over the top. Then I like to take a little chocolate and grate it over the top for decoration.

This can be eaten right away although it is better if you can refrigerate it for a few hours first this will help the dulce de leche to firm up a little.