When the cousins were here, we had pie three days in a row. At the start of the week, I knocked out three graham cracker crusts, wrapped them in plastic, and stashed them in the jelly cupboard. The first day I made a key lime pie. The second, a German cheesecake. And the third, a banoffee pie. [takes sweeping bow] My family thought they’d died and gone to heaven.
Banoffee pie — a mashup of bananas and toffee — originated in Britain (I think) and is enormously popular, from what I’ve read. I’ve been wanting to try one for years (seriously!), and since I’d made a large batch of dulce de leche that week, and we had a bunch of ripe bananas on the counter and that final crust in the cupboard, that’s exactly what I did.
The recipe was so simple — graham cracker crust, dulce de leche, bananas, whipped cream — that it felt trashy. I read it a bunch of times to make sure I wasn’t missing something, and then I read a bunch of other recipes, too, just to double check (and to familiarize myself with all comments and potential variations).
I was skeptical that anyone would like it, but I was wrong. The pie might be kinda low-brow — kinda like the classic banana pudding (that I loved) — but hey, not all pies need to be intimidating. And banoffee pie can be as classed-up as you like, what with homemade whipped cream, raw milk dulce, and, if you’re feeling righteously industrious, homemade graham crackers — or not!
Either way, it’s pie and people will gobble it.
Banoffee Pie
Most instructions say to assemble the pie immediately before eating, but some people say it’s better on day two. The bananas will brown a little, but they also kinda meld into the dulce so it’s not terrible — just be sure to cover them well with the whipped cream to slow the oxidation.
Lots of recipes call for 2 cups (cans) of dulce and only 2 bananas. However, I scaled back the dulce by half (it’s so sweet) and double the bananas.
Variations I’ve considered but haven’t yet tried include 1) caramelizing the bananas, 2) adding rum to the whipped cream, or to the dulce, 3) using cocoa powder in place of grated chocolate, 4) putting a thin layer of chocolate ganache on the bottom of the crust before adding the dulce, 5) using a coconuty shortbread instead of grahams for the crust — and so on. Flavors that keep popping into mind include coconut, pecans, pineapples. Mess around!
1 9-inch parbaked graham cracker crust (see below) 1-2 cups dulce de leche 3-4 bananas, perfectly ripe and without any spots 2-3 cups sour cream whip (see below) grated chocolate, optional
to assemble: Spread the dulce de leche over the bottom of the crust. Slice the bananas and arrange over the dulce. Top with the sour cream whip, making sure to completely cover the bananas. Flurry the top with freshly-grated semi-sweet chocolate. Refrigerate.
for the graham cracker crust: 1½ cups (150 grams) graham cracker crumbs 1 tablespoon white sugar 1 pinch salt 3-4 tablespoons butter, melted
Stir together the graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and salt. Add the melted butter. The crumbs should hold together when firmly fisted but not be so saturated that butter oozes out. Press the crumbs into a 9-inch pie shell and up the sides — use a metal cup, if you like. Bake the crust at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Cooled crusts can be wrapped in plastic and stored at room temperature for several days, or frozen for longer storage.
for the sour cream whip: 2 cups heavy cream 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 tablespoon sour cream 2 tablespoons 10x sugar
Combine all ingredients in a mixer and beat on high until soft to medium peaks form.
A few days after my older daughter moved moved back into our house (temporarily), my out-of-state brother’s three kids who are ages 4, 7, and 9 came to stay with us for a little over a week and just like that I went from having two fairly-independent children at home to six, three of which required full-time supervision, and was plunged back into the world of bedtime stories, snack-times, potty-training, communal bathing, and early-morning wake-ups.
Except it wasn’t exactly like it was when my kids were little because, this time around, I had three older kids to shoulder (an enormous portion of) the load.
My younger daughter managed bathtime and hair brushing. My older daughter supervised Monopoly sessions (and mediated the fallout).
All of my kids took on the job of “chore coach,” teaching their cousins the ropes of dish washing, collecting trash, bringing in firewood, folding laundry and so on, and then shadowing the kids as they began to do the jobs themselves.
not visible: the footstool my son is standing on
We made excursions to Costco and Magpie (to get mini vanilla braids and to see the kitchen where my younger daughter was working), and to the library to stock up on books.
78 books (the kids counted)
Nearly every day, the littles left for several hours to go play at their cousins’ or my parents’ house, or the cousins came here, and one day my older son and daughter-in-law took them on a special outing to the children’s museum and then out for pizza.
And then almost as abruptly as it began, the whirlwind ground to a halt. My older daughter moved out on Saturday and the next day the three littles went back to their home — and I felt… I don’t know. Adrift? Relieved, definitely. Also, bereft. I was so glad to have my house back again, the burden of needy littles lifted, and yet —
And yet.
As my kids have grown and our family has moved from one stage to the next, the earlier stages fade. I’ve felt sad every now and then, sure, but since the changes were incremental — reasonable, wanted —I could handle them, often not even noticing what I was losing. But for that one week that my brother’s kids were here, I was back in the thick of it again (which I always kinda hated but also sorta really loved because I thrive on chaos and adore all the organization, bossing, crisis management, cooking, and hands-on, in-the-moment work that goes with running a full house).
But this time my older kids were involved. We were all working together, rallying around these curious and cuddly children, and then the cousins left and we all went back to being our own people doing our own things, sometimes together but mostly independently as it should be and as I want it to be, but that bizarre mashup of two totally different life stages juxtaposed like that — young adult kids with the wee ones — reminded me of just how much I’ve lost and how grateful I am not to be doing that anymore and how much I miss it.
Especially feeding people. That part might be my favorite.
