Banoffee (or Banoffi?) Pie

I took a short flight to London last weekend to meet up with some Harvey Mudders and bounce around the city a little with a friend. I had a great time, and saw tons of different things that I hadn't the chance to see the last time I was there. I'll write about it later, but you can check out pics from Saturday on my Flickr site, and have a taste of this dessert that my friend and I shared after dinner.

It's Banoffi Pie, which was supposedly invented at the Hungry Monk Restaurant in 1972. This incarnation wasn't completely true to their recipe, which calls for cooking an unopened can of condensed milk in boiling water for five hours. The crust was more like a crushed graham cracker crust than a shortcut pastry, and there were chocolate bits and chocolate sauce all over the top, but the banana and toffee combination was delicious, and something I wouldn't have thought of. The British seem to like their toffee pretty well, even in yogurt. I ate this, but it was too sugary for me. I like the image of toffee springing from a dewy blade of grass, though.

Christmas in Scotia, NY

I meant to update my blog during the holidays – silly me, I thought I would have spare time during my two weeks of vacation! However, I was fully occupied with enjoying the time I could spend with my family and of course with my fiancé and his mom. It was the first Christmas that Matt and I had ever celebrated together, and also the first time that my family had met anyone from his family. Matt waited for me to come back from Paris to go shopping for decorations, only to find out that the stock of decorations in the stores had dwindled, few trees were left for sale, and that even finding lights for the tree was difficult! Of course, it was worth the trouble and a nice memory, since the tree was, in the end, beautiful.

My lovely stand mixer and I spent some quality time together over cookie dough, even though my Christmas Eve search for the ice cream maker attachment was unsuccessful. Here are some of the cookies my family decorated: frosted sour cream cookies (made with lard!), unfrosted sugar cookies, and my favorite peanut butter cookies with chocolate kisses. Cookie consumption was at very high levels this week.


Although there were terrible snowstorms out west, the weather in Scotia was mild and rainy. Since I have spent the last 10 Christmas holidays in Florida and because of course Paris has little hope of seeing snow this winter, I was disappointed to miss what I considered to be my only chance to play in the snow. A few days after Christmas, we did get a little, which was beautiful while it lasted (about 36 hours). Sunday morning, I took a little walk around Scotia, and ended up following some squirrel tracks down to the Mohawk river.

Christmas Concerts

Over the last couple of weekends, I've gone to two awesome Christmas concerts - one at a French church and one at the American Church. The American Church has a very professional music director, and the whole program was wonderful and eclectic. There were children's and adult choirs, handbells, and some invited professional classical musicians.

The French concert, though, was a group of young volunteers, called Pic'Pulse, performing an entire concert of Gospel music. I really had no idea that Gospel was so popular in France, but they were very well received and got a rousing ovation. They did a dozen classic Gospel songs like We are Climbing Jacob's Ladder, Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho, and Go Tell it On the Mountain, with a couple Zulu songs, including the National Hymn of South Africa. It was a really great concert, not because they were terribly professional, but because they sang with such enthusiasm. They may not have perfectly achieved the Gospel sound, but they sang with a lot of heart.

It was a bit strange to hear Gospel such with strong French accents, but anyway I admired their effort of learning so many songs in English. I have a fun time attempting Christmas carols in French, but I can't imagine performing by heart! Sorry about the blurry picture, but it was the best I could do.

Pic'Pulse has some more concerts in the spring, if you're around in May, and for the Fete de la Musique in June.