Banoffee Pie – Gluten free, Dairy Free

For the TART BASE

• Blend all in the thermomix on speed 6, 20 seconds OR food processor / blender for 30-40 seconds until well combined.

• Press onto a tray – for raw tarts, spring form pans are great because you can press away and build your tart and set it in the fridge or freezer for a bit before unlocking the pan and serving.
• Set in the freezer for half an hour.

For PASTRY CASE

• Preheat oven to 180C / 350F
• Prepare a tart shell
• Thermomix instruction: Grind your nuts and seeds to a rough chop, speed 5, 4 seconds.
• Add the rest of the ingredients and mix speed 6, 20 seconds until well combined.
• Food processor: Break down your nuts and seeds into a rough meal.
• Add the rest of the ingredients and process until well combined. Pop in the fridge in a big ball for 30 minutes.
• Roll out between two greased pieces of parchment paper so that it doesn’t stick, and is about 1/2 cm thick all around.
• This is enough to make 2 x 20cm pie crust to serve 12, OR what I did, which was 1 x 20cm pie tin and 30 bite sized minis as a sweet treat canape, perfect for parties.
  
• Grease your quiche tin or tarte shell with olive oil, coconut oil or butter, and then gently place in the rolled out pastry and press into the sides.
• If making minis, grease a mini muffin tin and roll walnut sized balls of the pastry into a ball and then press the balls out into the mini muffin tins.
• Bake on 180C for 30 minutes (20-25mins for the minis). If you have a fan forced oven you might find it’s even a little less time. Jut keep an eye on them from 20 minutes onwards to be safe.
• Once they’ve darkened a little around the edges then you’re done. Let cool for half an hour and then lift from their tin / dish. Let fully cool before filling (45mins – 1 hour by a window is usually fine)

For the TOFFEE

• Thermomix: Place all ingredients into the thermomix for 60mins, speed 4, 100C. Leave the little lid off. It will splash a few tiny drips but nothing major, and you need to steam to be able to escape. This is very similar to the delicious dulche de leche recipe from my beautiful friend Jo Whitton's site, Quirky Cooking.
• OR Saucepan: Place all ingredients into a medium saucepan on low-med for 2-3 hours until thick dark brown colour. Perfect to set up when you’re about to sit down to a movie, some work or cleaning the house (sorry I mentioned cleaning!)
• Once it’s really dark and blobby in colour, cool and pour into a large 500ml jar. You can store this in the fridge for a month, no problems.
• OPTION - If you’re not dairy intolerant, add 30g butter and a pinch of sea salt for an even more authentic toffee taste, although we really enjoyed it without.
• TROUBLESHOOT If your toffee just doesn’t thicken, option is there to add another 50-80g syrup and boil a further 30mins on the stove OR a further 15 minutes in the thermomix on 100C, speed 4. Varying coconut oils make this toffee variable, unfortunately.

For the CREAM

• Cheat’s option Use yoghurt or coconut yoghurt, with 1 tbsp lime juice, 2 tbsp rice malt, maple or honey depending on preference, and 1 tsp vanilla bean powder OR a scraped vanilla pod. It’s delicious, it’s super easy, it’s quick.

For Whipped Coconut Cream

• So, place those 3 cans in the fridge for 1 hour (I just do this the day before or have 1-2 cans in the fridge always at the ready)
• Skim thick ‘tops’ and place in a blender, TM or jug to use egg beaters / bamix type stick.
• Add juice of 1 lime, 2 tbsp rice malt, honey or maple syrup
• Add 1 tsp vanilla powder OR 1 scraped vanilla bean
• Blend on high for 1 minute to aerate and thicken. Refrigerate before using, to set it a little.

ASSEMBLY

• This is SO easy. Once your cooked tart shell / shells are cooled (Or raw one is set) - Pile a few generous blobs of the toffee onto the base.
• Pile a few blobs of cream / yoghurt on top of that
• Pile a generous slice of bananas on top of that, then more toffee and cream and build with a banana on top!
• Play around with your own variations. As everything else is / can be fructose free with the rice malt syrup being used for sweetness, the berry variation means it’s a good super low fructose option. Most fodmap sensitive people I’d imagine would be fine with that too!