Banoffee Joy - Even if you think you don't like it!

Tucking in with a little ice cream to
complete such decadence!

Puddings are not really my forte.  I eat them.  But unlike my close friends who flourish in the kitchen with flour and eggs and produce masterpieces of sugary heaven, I usually find the whole experience hyper-stressful... at least unless accompanied by excited compadres.  So it was with an optimistic outlook I decided to attempt to put together a dessert for a best friend's birthday.  A highly prized favourite, banoffee pie seemed the obvious and only choice to make, and having consulted a handful of slightly conflicting recipes, I plumped for a method which combined what I thought to be the best bits of all of them.  Fortunately the gamble paid off.  Now I have learned two valuable lessons from this sweet experience.  Firstly that cleaning a saucepan that is covered in caramel is as good a work out as a visit to the resistance machines at the gym that you pay £25 a month to use - sugar and condensed milk is definitely cheaper!  But secondly and most importantly, I really like banoffee pie and therefore am now  a humbly disproved sceptic.  The pie was constructed from a few BBC food/GoodFood recipes and I added a few dashes of ground cinnamon to the cream for a spicy twist.  After all toffee, banana and cinnamon - can't go far wrong there!  Furthermore the aforemetioned friendling loved it too - win!

The Pie chilling in the fridge... It improves after about 12 hours
so  this is definitely a pudding you can make in advance.