The Great Denby Bake Off

When I heard about the great denby bake off It was the perfect excuse to bake something special. When you live with just one other person you need a really good excuse to make a big cake or desert as you know that between just two people we would eat the whole thing and we can't do that too often!

Wanting to make something spectacular I decided on a recipe for banana cream pie. Now I know most people love banoffee pie topped with chocolate sprinkles but unfortunately I have an allergy to chocolate so a cream pie without the chocolate topping is perfect.

The recipe simply uses ready made pastry but as I didn't have any I decided to head over to my trusty Lorraine Pascale book and hunt down a suitable pastry recipe and settled on her honey shortcrust pastry.

With the pastry case baked and cooled it was time to go back to the original recipe book, one of my favourites from Marks and Spencer, Grandmas best recipes to continue with my great banana bake off. 

 

I started by making the custard and to say I was a bit nervous about making custard from scratch was an understatement. In our house we have had one of those pots of birds custard powder and every time I have attempted to even make this part made custard it's gone totally wrong leaving me with an inedible, lumpy and often burnt mess.  However this recipe must be super easy, because the not only did my custard work but the recipe does actually say to strain! but my custard was so perfect and smooth it didn't need it, 

With the custard cooling it was onto cutting the banana's and soaking them in Lemon juice before assembling them in my pastry case. 

With the banana's neatly in place and the  custard cooled it was time to put the custard into my pie, top with cream then add the sprinkles. Although I can't have chocolate a great substitute is the use of a caramac bar.

  The pie was simply amazing but sadly there is only so much cream pie two people can eat and even this was too much for us and some sadly went to waste. Next time i'll make a desert that last longer than a few days!