I feel as though I spend my life managing food. Between ensuring that the basics are always in stock, planning and shopping for meals and trying to avoid waste, it’s almost a full-time job. And that’s quite apart from the cooking and, of course, the baking.
So it happened that I was wracking my brains for a way to use up bananas at the same time I was wondering what choux bun filling and icing might be a bit different. And so I happened upon the idea of a caramelised banana, or rather, banoffee (banana + toffee) choux buns.
And despite first leaning towards a chocolate topping, I found that the flavour overwhelmed the banana. My go-to salted caramel (see here, here and here for other ways to get more caramel in your life!) was the perfect thing, when mixed with a little icing sugar. Hey presto, banoffee choux buns!
The resulting confection is a little on the beige side of things but taste won over aesthetics.
I have tried many different recipes for profiteroles, éclairs and cheese puffs (gougères) over the years. Some have been a total fluke (mini-eclairs made in a rush before leaving for work on the morning of new years’ eve 2015), others an epic failure (gougères made frantically just before friends arrived for dinner at least twice). After buying an iced vanilla choux bun as a birthday treat for myself last year, I was determined to master the basic recipe.
I’ve tried Paul Hollywood’s, Mary Berry’s and Kim-Joy’s choux recipes, amongst others and found that Kim-Joy’s was the most reliable and straightforward. What would I do without the Great British Bake Off? I probably wouldn’t be doing this, for a start.
Anyway, if I could convince you to try making banana choux buns for just one reason, it would be that choux pastry is so versatile. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you can easily rustle up desserts, afternoon treats and delicious appetisers.
Here’s a link to Kim-Joy’s recipe with details of how to make hedgehog-shaped and -decorated choux buns, if that’s your thing.
If you want to fill your choux with crème pâtissière, I highly recommend Mary Berry’s recipe (although her choux didn’t work very well for me)
Let me know how you get on making banoffee choux buns on Instagram @hollyspinny
Ingredients
Choux buns
- 85g unsalted butter
- 225g water
- Pinch of salt
- 100g plain flour (or 50g plain flour and 50g strong white flour)
- 3 medium eggs
Banoffee cream filling
- 4 bananas
- 50g unsalted butter
- 3 tbsp light brown muscovado sugar
- 250ml double cream
Salted caramel icing
- 125g white sugar
- 80ml double cream
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp sea salt flakes
- 40g icing sugar
- Banana chips to decorate
Method
Choux buns
Switch your oven on to 200C
Weigh butter and water into a saucepan and add a pinch of salt. Heat until the butter has melted and the mixture is starting to bubble.
Whilst it’s heating up, measure out flour.
When the water and butter begins to bubble, take the saucepan off the heat, add the flour in one go and beat it well with a wooden spoon. You can stop beating when the dough comes together in a ball and comes cleanly away from the sides of the pan.
Transfer the dough to the bowl of a freestanding mixer and leave to cool for 10 minutes.
(If you don’t have a mixer, you can use electric beaters or a wooden spoon and plenty of elbow grease!)
Crack an egg into the bowl and switch the mixer on (or use electric beaters or a spoon) until it is well combined. Crack a second egg in and mix again.
Separately, whisk the third egg in a little bowl. Add a tablespoon of the whisked egg and switch the mixer on again until incorporated. Lift the arm up and look for a ‘V’ shape in the mixture left sticking to the beater. Keep adding a tablespoon at a time, mixing and lifting until you see it. As egg sizes vary quite a lot, I sometimes have to only add 1 tablespoon and other times 2 or 3.
Scoop and scrape the dough into a piping bag fitted with a round nozzle and pipe blobs onto baking trays lined with baking paper. (Or spoon out little mounds if you don’t have a piping bag) Space them out well as they will puff up.
Pop a single baking tray into the oven at a time. After 10 minutes, turn down the heat to 180C and bake for a further 20 minutes. Don’t open the oven door until 5 minutes before the end of the cooking time, or the choux buns might deflate.
When you take them out of the oven, transfer them to a cooking rack and poke a hole in each one to let steam escape. Leave them to cool completely before filling and icing.
Banoffee cream filling
To make the caramelised bananas, melt the butter and sugar together in a frying pan on a medium heat. When it starts to bubble, add the sliced bananas. Turn up the heat and leave to cook and caramelise for 3-4 mins on each side, then tip the bananas and all the lovely banana-flavoured caramel into a bowl to cool.
When cold, put the caramelised bananas into a blender with the double cream and whizz together. It will only take a few seconds to obtain a thick banoffee cream.
You can either use a piping bag fitted with a special thin nozzle to fill the choux buns (poke it in where you made a hole to let the steam escape) or simply slice each bun in half and spoon a generous amount on the bottom half before placing the top half back on top.
Salted caramel icing
Now, to make the caramel filling, measure 60ml of cold water and the white sugar into a small or medium-sized saucepan, preferably with a heavy base and high sides, as the caramel will bubble up when you add the cream. Use a slightly bigger saucepan if yours doesn’t have high sides.
Swirl the pan over a low heat to dissolve the sugar in the water and then crank up the heat to boil the mixture. Don’t stir it. It will take a few minutes for the water to evaporate but it will eventually change colour. When about half of the mixture is golden brown, turn the heat off and add the cream. Now you can use a spoon and stir it gently. The bubbling will subside and it should have become a glossy, syrupy caramel. Add the salt and vanilla extract and stir in.
Leave the mixture to cool completely but don’t put it in the fridge.
Sift in 40g icing sugar and stir. You want a ‘spreading’ consistency. If it’s too thick add a little water to loosen it up – I added just a few drops of water. If it’s too runny, add a little more icing sugar to stiffen it up.
Using a palette knife, spread some caramel icing on top of each banoffee choux bun and top with a banana chip.