British Indian Ocean Territory

The British Indian Ocean Territory has the status of overseas territory of the United Kingdom and is located in the Indian Ocean – the Chagos archipelago. After the expulsion of the local population (about 2000 people) in the 1960s and 1970s of the neighboring islands of Mauritius and Seychelles, the island’s only inhabitants are now British and US military, with a total population of around 2500. Access to the islands of casual tourists, journalists and their former inhabitants is forbidden. For this reason, there is no way to have a local cake, but if the “locals” are currently British, the cake is also British. 🙂

No one invents the dishes, they evolve – these are the words of Ian Dowding who invented the banofi pie recipe. The name of the cake comes from the two English words – banana and toffee. It is said that this dessert was a favorite of Margaret Thatcher and that this dessert often attended meals at Buckingham Palace. This dessert is not so long ago on the world scene of sweets – it all started in 1971 in a small town in Sussex. In 1968, Nigel McKenzie bought a building that, before it was enlarged, represented four houses for nuns and built a restaurant in it called the Hungry Monk. The chef becomes Ian Dowding, who has a culinary background and has worked as a cook assistant. He brings with him a piece of paper on which he writes BCT – an acronym that used to mark his pie in the past – BlumTs Cofee Toffee Pie.

The chef jealously kept the recipe for this pie with a soft butter base, soft caramel and coffee flavored with cream. It was this caramel sauce that could not prepare Ian Dowding. Quite by chance, in a conversation with his sister, she told him how to make condensed milk caramel. The technology was very simple – boil canned condensed milk for a few hours. Today we can now buy the finished caramel – it is sold under the name dulce de leche.

After several attempts, they were able to find the right way to make the sauce and began experimenting with fruits to lighten the dessert. The apples turned out pretty well, but the oranges turned unplesant. Finally, they tried bananas on Nigel’s idea, and it all came to taste. Only the name was very long – banana pie, caramel and coffee cream. Again Nigel showed ingenuity – took a banana syrup and caramel and the word Banofi was born. Today, that word is even in the Oxford Dictionary. The restaurant that gave birth to the recipe for this cake closed in 2012, but the recipe is marching around the world and is loved by many.

The pie I prepared for you is a bit out of the ordinary recipe, but for me it’s more balanced from the side of sweet with the addition of black chocolate in the recipe. Here are the products you need:

150 grams of butter cookies

100 grams of melted butter

350 grams of dulce de leche (ready or home-made)

2 large bananas

200 grams of chocolate

350 grams of cream

150 grams of cream to garnish

grated chocolate to garnish

Steps of preparation:

Something lately I’m not getting enough time. Now I couldn’t find dulce de leche and had to prepare it myself. I cooked it for about 2 hours and it became divine.

The oven is heated to 180 ° C. Sliding wall shape and size 18-20 cm is smeared with butter. The biscuits are ground or crushed and mixed with the melted butter. The resulting “wet” mixture is distributed in the form – both on the bottom and on the walls. Using a flat bottom cup, pressure well.

Bake for about 15 minutes until golden, then allow to cool completely.

Meanwhile, prepare the chocolate ganache in the standard way: the cream (350ml) is heated to boiling, after which the chocolate is poured over it, it is allowed to melt for 30-40 seconds and then stirred vigorously until the mixture is homogeneous and shiny. Allow to cool slightly for 10 minutes.

Dulce de leche is distributed on the baked biscuit butter base. Thick slices of bananas are stacked on top of it.