‘Offee pie is a unique RMKealy recipe.  However, it’s not inspired by culinary genius, painstakingly formulated and tested in a professional kitchen.

It’s what happens when a typical modern Irish woman (read: insanely busy) juggles slightly too many balls in the air while attempting to be that multi-limbed goddess of family, home and work that exists mainly in our over-wrought imaginations.

Eventually, one of the balls comes crashing down, and she forgets the bananas in the banoffee pie.

My lovely dinner guests, Emily and Mike of the beautifully calming  and creative From China Village (seriously read it, better than Prozac. Actually better than Prozac and wine. Now there’s a tough combination to beat) were gracious enough to laugh it off and kindly tuck in to the banana-less banana dessert.

But seriously, if you’d like a real Banoffee Pie recipe, simply look below, where my dear friend Marie (whose Banoffee recipe is famous down here) has kindly provided a proper recipe for this great low-cost entertaining treat. With crucial namesake ingredient and all.

Ingredients

• 3 large bananas
• 300g biscuits digestive biscuits
• 60g butter
• 350ml double cream
• 100g dark chocolate (to decorate)
• 400g tin of caramel (don’t bother making your own, honestly, it takes 3 hrs watching a tin of condensed milk boil!!! Really I dont have the time!!!!)

Instructions

1. Melt the butter in a pan. Whilst the butter melts crush the  biscuits  (plastic bag and rolling pin would do the job nicely why would you complicate it more!!!!!). Preheat the oven to 180C.  In a bowl mix the crushed biscuits with the butter.
2. Transfer the biscuit / butter mixture into a round tin and press into an even layer. I do like the small individual dishes, it looks pretty!! And guetss love their own.
3. Place in the oven and allow to cook for 10 minutes to when it is lightly toasted,. Take out of the oven and let it cool.
4. Once is cooled, pour on the caramel evenly and place in the refrigerator  to cool and set .
5. Once chilled, slice the bananas and arrange them over the caramel.  Arrange it doens have to be perfect
6. Melt chocolate, and whip the cream until thick and spread over the bananas.
7. Pour the chocolate over the dessert ( get as decorative as you want ) and serve.

• Two small adjustments I do and this depends on your guest; I swap a quarter of the biscuits for the bases with chocolate bourbon biscuits so you get a slightly choclolate-y base. Don’t swap all of them because it make the base too hard to break when eating.
• Another alternation I do is crunch a Crunchie over the banoffie so you get a sweet topping instead of plain chocolate. These arent huge differences but they work.

Ed’s Note: I took inspiration from this Marie and added Flake to the top! Well, inspiration and unadulterated laziness….;)