I Tried Mary Berry's Banoffee Pie, And It Was Perfect After This 1 Change

I’ve been on a bit of a chocolate dessert kick recently. I’ve tried Nigella Lawson’s Nutella cheesecake and her “old-fashioned” chocolate cake recipes, for instance (I recommend both). 

But last weekend, I had a hankering for something a little more... retro.  Something piled high with cream and covered in chocolate. Something a little like Mary Berry’s banoffee pie recipe from Classic By Mary Berry. 

The iconic ’70s dessert is surprisingly simple to make, relying on a no-bake biscuit base, a three-ingredient quick caramel, bananas, whipped cream and dark chocolate topping. 

It was the best I’d ever tried – but only after a key change to its topping. 

The prep takes about 20 minutes

Then, she asked us to put some Digestives in a zip-seal bag and whack them with a rolling pin. I don’t have any plastic bags (that’ll be relevant later), but hitting them in a bowl with the base of a rolling pin worked too.

Once you’ve mixed those ground-up biccies with melted butter (I used a microwave), you press them into the bottom of the cake tin and pop it in the fridge.

While that chilled, I made the caramel topping, which involved mixing brown sugar with butter and then adding a can of sweetened condensed milk when the two had combined. 

This was surprisingly fast and easy – I’ve historically been terrible at making caramel (I somehow always burn it), but the addition of condensed milk and constant stirring prevented that. 

I placed it straight on the butter and biscuit base, which may have been left to rest for something like 12 rather than 15 minutes (don’t tell Mary).

This needed to set in the fridge for at least an hour and up to a day; I lasted about 90 minutes before adding the bananas and cream to the top. 

Three smallish bananas were perfect for the job. I always soft-whip cream that’s going to be refrigerated for more than an hour, as it stiffens when it cools; Mary herself recommends “soft peaks.” 

Then, I made my one change to the recipe

Mary Berry advises making a sort of chocolate “lattice” by piping dark chocolate in a grid across the top of the pie. 

Not only does Mary herself admit this could “melt the cream”, I didn’t have a piping bag, or even a plastic bag I could prick a hole in as a substitute. 

Besides, I don’t really like the idea of a chocolate grid. The topping would feel a bit too solid and brittle, I thought, and doesn’t look the best to me. 

I reasoned that if I was going to do this, I’d probably pipe it onto baking paper on a plate before adding it to the top to prevent melting, but I couldn’t, so I didn’t. 

My worry was that the curls were discouraged because they’d get damp in the fridge, but my speedier, less messy version (using the exact same amount of dark chocolate) held up overnight.

So... how did it go?

People, it was divine. 

The biscuit base had a nutty, salty toastiness I loved (if you wanted to go really fancy, I’m sure browned butter would be delicious). 

The caramel was somehow not cloying, and Mary’s insistence that the bananas be “just ripe” meant they weren’t mushy or sickly sweet. 

As for the topping, it was definitely the right call to leave the cream soft-whipped. It certainly grew firmer overnight.

And for what it’s worth, I was very happy with the grated chocolate; it looked unapologetically retro and balanced the sweetness of the rest of the dessert.