White Chocolate Banoffee pie

Ingredients I used:

For the base

• 1 x 300g packet of  Hobnobs light (not particularly to save calories, although they taste the same I'm told, more that they were 24p per packet in Tescos. Whilst there I also discovered vegan digestives in their value range which could work nicely)
• 60g vitalite (or any vegan spread e.g. Pure soya)

For the caramel

• 100g vitalite/ vegan margarine
• 100g caster sugar
• 1 x 300g pack of Organic CremoVita soy cream (also bought from Tesco's)
• 100g Soya milk (I used Tesco's apple sweetened version)

For the banoffee

• 3 large ripe bananas
• 1 x 300g pack of Organic CremoVita soy cream 
• 75g (3 packs) of Dairy free White chocolate buttons (From Tesco's - can supermarkets really be that bad)
• Small amount of vegan dark chocolate for flicking around the room hopefully getting some on top of your pie

The making of the pie...

1. The first thing I did was make the base by blenderising all the biscuits and then adding the 60g of melted margarine. I'm not sure how vital the laptop for blasting out spotify tunes was so use your own discretion  

2. I then used the back of a spoon to press this mix into the bottom of a 25cm ish lightly greased flan dish. Now, the removable bottom dish was pulled from the cupboard too late for this pie however, it came out in perfect slices from the dish used. If you are wanting to remove the base from the cooking dish whole rather than in slices to serve it on some other dish, I think you'd be best rummaging a bit longer for that removable base one.

3. Bung this base into the oven at 180c for 10-12 minutes. Here's one I made earlier, well yesterday.

4. Next or whilst that's in the oven if you're a multitasker/female I made the caramel sauce. Combine the cream and milk (I was going for an improv condensed milk type effect and it appears to work well). Add the sugar and margarine into a saucepan on a low heat and then add in the cream milk mix. I was slightly concerned as I just bunged them all in together straight away and thought perhaps I should have done it in a somehow more complex way for it to work, it worked anyway. I brought the mix to the boil and kept it there stirring until it thickened up a lot and looked like toffee sauce. This took a reasonably long time - wish i'd timed it now, anyway long enough to start thinking maybe it's not gonna thicken/work!

5. When all gooey and yum after some deliberation I added the banana in slices to the caramel and mixed it all in

 

6. I then spread this on my cooled base and chilled it in the fridge for about an hour.

7. To make the creamy topping I simply whisked the CremoVita adding the melted white chocolate buttons whilst whisking (Inspired by the mousse I made using the delicious recipe found at http://www.maplespice.com/). Simple but effective and not too heavy or rich as I thought it might be. Once whipped up, spread it on the banana caramel layer

8. I then decided to go for some arty type chocolate flicks on top over a dusting of cocoa, if you fancy it just melt the dark chocolate, dip in a fork, have some tea towels ready and scoot any tune blasting laptops to saftey. Et Voila!

9. Chill it, slice it, eat it.