Oh Pie Goodness!

It was my birthday. My 21st birthday, actually. I didn’t want a big celebration – my family took me out for a meal at a restaurant the night before, the Beefeater. It was nice, the food was great, and my boyfriend came too, of course. We’d been together over 2 years at that point, so of course he comes along for family celebrations. For the purposes of this story, I’ll call him Theo (not his real name).

The next day, on my birthday, after celebrating with my family I went to my boyfriend’s house to stay the night. We usually have sleepovers on weekends, and as it was a Friday night, I stayed over. We’re both still relatively young, and both still live at home with our families, so I’m getting to know his family a lot better by staying over frequently. I’m quite close to them now, I was really nervous the first few months we started dating because I’m not the best people-person. But, they seem to like me, so I’m glad.

We were watching a movie in the living room in the evening, I think it was The Princess Bride (great movie by the way, if you’ve not seen it). Theo’s younger sister Evie got up and smiled like she knew something I didn’t, though they’ve got a lot of inside jokes I still don’t understand, so I just smiled back and looked at the TV. I get distracted quickly, so I paid no mind to what she was doing, until Theo paused the movie and Evie turned off the main lights.

Their mom walked slowly out of the kitchen with something in her hands. There were some pink candles in it that were lit, and they all started singing Happy Birthday to me! I’ll admit, I went all red and blushed like I was on fire, but I was smiling from ear-to-ear.

Theo’s mom carefully walked around the sofa and sat next to me, holding the biggest cooking dish I’d ever seen, and it was filled to the brim with a huge Banoffee Pie! I blew out the candles of course, before the wax could get on the cream, and she dished us all up a big bowl full. It looked absolutely delicious, and it tasted like heaven on a spoon.

Evie told me they’d spent the day making it, between work and school and getting dinner ready. They made it especially for me, for my birthday. I’ve not felt love like that before, and I think that was the moment I realised I wanted to be a part of their family forever. I mean, they spent their time after getting in from a long day of work and school, in small kitchen, making something just for me, for my birthday gift. I don’t think anyone outside of my immediate family have ever done anything that special before.

Here is the ingredients list and the method I recently asked Theo for. He said they found an online recipe a few years ago, but have altered the amounts so it would all fit into a big cooking dish. This is the list he gave me. He said they basically doubled the recipe they found, so if you don’t want to make quite so much feel free to halve it.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did! That memory is staying rent-free in my mind forever.

I am so truly grateful for the people I have in my life, and for being a part of two very loving families.

Ingredients:

- 1 packet of plain digestive biscuits and a few extra (about 400g)

- Butter (about 200g)

- 2 tins of Caramel

- 6 Bananas

- 500g double cream

- Icing sugar

Method (according to Theo)

1. You first need to crush the digestive biscuits up until they are like fine crumbs. Theo's mum used a plastic rolling pin to do this and put them into a bowl afterwards.

2. Melt the butter and mix it with the biscuit crumbs.

3. Get a large glass baking dish and put the biscuit mixture into it. Use a spoon to press it down to make a smooth surface on the base of the dish.

4. Put this into the refrigerator for minimum 1 hour.

5. Pour the caramel over the biscuit base in the dish. Smooth it out with a spatula.

6. Chop up the banana into slices.

7. Put the banana slices on top of the caramel.

8. Put it back in the fridge.

9. Whip up the cream with some icing sugar until its thick enough to make peaks form. Spoon the cream on top of the banana slices.

10. Put it back in the fridge for a few hours.

11. Serve it up to your loved ones!