Bake off #1

So it was my turn to cook in the weightwatchers evening bake off this week - every Thursday we weigh in and then go to one of our houses to cook for the evening, rotating each week whose turn it is to cook. The challenge is to keep main course and dessert to 20 points+, and ideally keep it under £10 for each person.

So in an ideal world it would be a cheap, healthy meal after a successful weigh in. But the reality is that I bought Mary Berry's new recipe book the day it came out and I haven't had a chance to cook from it yet. Everything looks so delicious and simple to make - she always tries to keep her ingredients list down to a minimum - but they aren't exactly weightwatchers friendly!

I've had my eye on these mini banoffee pies ever since I first flicked through the book and I couldn't wait to try them!

 

I have to admit that the most satisfying part of making it was bashing the digestive biscuits as hard as I possibly could with a rolling pin, to make the crumbs for the base! To set the base I used 5 bashed up digestives and stirred them into 40g of melted margarine (Mary recommends butter).

 

 

I have also never tasted anything as delicious as the tin of caramel that I bought from the Co-op for the banoffe sauce - although at 24 points+ per tin, I probably shouldn't have been dipping the spare digestive biscuits in it and munching through them whilst I was making the dessert...! The whole contents of the tin were melted along with 40g margarine and muscavado sugar, before pouring the sauce over the base.

 

I left the caramel and biscuit to set overnight before adding the bananas and cream today just before serving... and can you believe it, on my very first food blog post... that I forgot to take a photo of the finished product with the cream on!! After all of the effort I went to... oops! They were meant to have double cream whipped on top but instead of that, I used low fat squirty cream in my attempt to make them a little more weightwatchers friendly. I think they came out at 8 points in the end, which is better than the ones you can buy in the supermarket!

 

But I can vouch that it was the most amazing home made mini banoffee pie I have ever tasted!!! And my weightwatchers bake off guests didn't seem to mind it either! I will definitely make this again in the near future, and they are perfect for dinner parties!

Thanks Mary!

Dans