Earlier that day, I baked the healthiest cookies - they contained no flour, no sugar, and zilch eggs! Just maple sweetness and oat flour, and a few hundred calories from the rich macadamias and chips of white chocolate, and they were nearly all eaten by the time we sat down to scroll through the endless list of films on the ol’ Netflix.
Naturally, this is the bit where I carry on telling you about how good these cookies were, and below there would be the recipe for them. And yes, they were really delicious, but they were also pretty damn ugly and so flat, that when you picked them up they fell to pieces and the macadamias looked like overgrown warts about to pop on a witch’s face. No camera angle or £14 dishcloth could do them justice, so I’m sharing our dessert from the previous Saturday instead, whilst I work on a solution to make these coconut oil laden discs more plump and cookie-esque, like The Flourishing Foodie's Maple Pecan Cookies.
These
tarts are filled with a labour of love: homemade dulce de leche made with goats
milk. They can taste so goat-y, but different brands have different goat
tasting levels so try to use mild milk. The blended banana also goes a long way
in softening the goat-y edge. And if the butter to biscuit ratio in the base
looks a little frightening, it’s there to help you get over the fact that
goat’s milk tastes like farm. Of course, you could just use cow’s milk, but goat’s
milk adds a complexity to dulce de leche, one that cow’s milk will never
succumb to.
Goat's Milk Dulce De Leche Oreo Banoffee Tarts With Coconut Whipped Cream
Makes five deep tartlets, eight regular tartlets or one 23cm tart.
Dulce De Leche
Dulce De Leche
2 pints goat’s or cows milk
Pinch of sea salt
1 cinnamon stick (optional)
1 cup caster sugar
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda in 2 tbsp water
1 banana
Base
1 cup Oreos
½ cup butter, melted
Topping
2 x 400g can coconut milk, refrigerated for 12 hours
Pinch cream of tartar
Grated dark chocolate shavings
Grated dark chocolate shavings
Bring the milk, salt, cinnamon and sugar to a simmer in a heavy bottomed saucepan on low heat. Take off the heat and slowly add the bicarbonate of soda and water: this has to be added drop by drop to stop the mixture foaming rapidly. Keep the mixture at a medium-low heat, stirring occasionally until it turns a light brown, this will take about 1 hour 30 minutes. Stir the mixture every ten minutes, until it turns a light shade of brown. As soon as it starts to thicken, stir continuously until it’s a deep red colour. Take off the heat as soon as the caramel reaches copper-red. If the mixture is lumpy strain it through a sieve, then pour into a sterilised jar and refrigerate once cooled.
Pulse Oreos in a food processer fitted with a blade attachment until just broken up. Slowly pour in the melted butter, keep pulsing until a wet and crumbly dough forms. Alternatively bash biscuits to a fine crumb with a rolling pin and stir in the butter. Divide the crumbs into five deep (or seven regular sized) loose-bottomed pastry cases and use a spoon to press the mixture around the sides and bottom. Refrigerate for one hour.
In a large bowl add cooled dulce de leche and the banana, use a hand blender to combine the two until the banana is completely immersed in with the caramel. Or mash banana with a fork and fold through caramel.
Take the coconut milk out of the fridge, open the can and separate the water from the blob of cream built up on top. Place the coconut ‘blobs’ into a bowl with cream of tartar and whisk until soft peaks form.
Pour the banana filling into the pastry cases up to two thirds full. Spoon the coconut whipped cream on top, sprinkle with chocolate shavings and leave to set in the fridge for one hour before serving.
