Monday 21 May 2012

Take my mother in law

We had the in laws around for Sunday lunch this weekend.  I like cooking for them - they like food so I always get the chance to try out a few new things.  This week it was leg of lamb cooked on top of potatoes, which is a completely new concept for me.  I was a bit concerned about cooking spuds for that long and that concern was justified when they attached themselves to the bottom of the tray.  Still, once chiseled off they were really lovely and I'd do that again with a few adjustments!  The concept is simple enough - thickly slice potatoes, season, add 1/2 litre of stock, put lamb on top, cook.  Definitely worth giving it a try.

Since I was going for risky main, I went for easy as heck pudding which also happens to be my mother in laws favourite.  I was originally drawn to a bbc good food recipe because I liked the chocolate on top, but then I read it and decided to do my own thing anyway.  This is one of those that is great to do with a joint of meat because it needs a lot of fridge action. 

Clares-banoffee-pie-of-sorts

14 chocolate digestives
60g unsalted butter (it really does need to be butter for this, and it doesn't even matter if you forget to get it out of the fridge!)
Either a tin of caramel or a tin of condensed milk boiled for approximately 2 hours to make a tin of caramel
Large pot of double cream
1 tbsp extra fine caster or icing sugar
3 bananas
approx 40g chocolate (the size of a mini chocolate bar)

Crush 12 of the digestive biscuits.  Either shove them in a food processor or beat out your rage with a rolling pin.  Depends what sort of day you've had really.

Melt the butter slowly in a pan.  Eat the other two biscuits while you wait.
Add the crushed biscuits to the butter and mix well.

Press the mix into a loose bottom flan or cake tin and allow it to rise up the sides.  Refrigerate for 20 - 30 minutes.

Remove the biscuity goodness from the fridge and spoon on the caramel.  Don't stir or over mix this.  Return to the fridge for a couple of hours (which is about the time it takes to cook the lamb).  Lick the spoon.

Slice up your bananas and place on top of the now cool and slightly firm caramel.
Melt your chocolate either in a baine marie or in the microwave.  Its such a small amount of chocolate that I went for the microwave method.  Allow to cool whilst you whisk together the sugar and cream until thick.  Spoon over the bananas and cover the entire cake.

Drizzle the melted chocolate over the top and refrigerate for another 15 minutes so it hardens.  Mix together any left over chocolate and the cream in the bottom of the jug.  Eat.  Pretend you didn't.

I forgot to take a picture, so I've pinched the one my mother in law took.

Banoffee pie
The epically poor slicing was down to the other half and a lack of cake slice.


We demolished the entire thing between 5 adults and Milly who ate it even though she doesn't like cream.  She also ate my base and pinched some from other plates, so that's a win for that pudding.

If you have a few more minutes, and the tins to do it, this is lovely made in to small individual pies.

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