Banoffee Cheesecake with Toffee Pecan Sauce

Begin by toasting all the pecan nuts.

Place them on a baking tray and bake in the oven for 7 minutes until lightly toasted or, if you watch them like a hawk, you can toast them under a grill.  You can also watch how to roast nuts in our Cookery School Video. Then chop them quite small. Put the biscuits in a polythene bag, lay them flat and then roll them with a rolling pin to crush them coarsely. Then tip them into a bowl and add the melted butter and half the nuts. Mix them well then press all this into the bottom of the cake tin and pre-bake the base in the oven for 10 minutes.

Then lower the temperature to gas mark 2, 300ºF (150ºC).

For the filling, first blend the 3 bananas and lemon juice in a food processor until smooth, then simply add all the rest of the filling ingredients. Blend again then pour it all over the biscuit base and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 1 hour. Turn off the oven and leave the cheesecake inside to cool slowly until completely cold; this slow cooling will stop the cheesecake cracking.

To make the sauce, place the butter, sugars and syrup in a saucepan and, over a very low heat, allow everything to dissolve completely. Let it cook for about 5 minutes. Pour in the cream and vanilla extract and stir until everything is smooth, then add the rest of the chopped pecan nuts. Remove it from the heat and allow it to cool completely before pouring it into a jug ready for serving. When you are ready to assemble the cheesecake put the 2 tablespoons of lemon juice into a bowl.

Slice the remaining bananas at an oblique angle into ¼ inch (5 mm) slices, and gently toss them around to get an even coating of juice. If you like you can spoon a small circle of sauce into the centre, then layer the bananas in overlapping circles all round it.

Serve the cheesecake cut into slices with the rest of the sauce handed round separately.