Banoffee Cheesecake with a Cornflake Base

It all started with a basket of fruit that we were sent at work. By the end of the week, there were a couple of bananas left that were going really soft. I was the last person in the office on the Friday (sigh) so thought I may as well take them home as they would only be thrown away otherwise - even though I don't like bananas! A few of my boyfriend's family were coming to our house at the weekend for an informal barbecue and I wanted to make dessert; I knew they liked bananas even though I didn't so I thought this would be a good way to use them up. Though I don't think the person who sent the healthy fruit basket necessarily expected the fruit to end up in a sugary dessert - we did eat the rest of the fruit whole!

I remembered that I had bought some cornflakes at Easter to make chocolate cornflake cakes and it had been a massive box. I'm not a big fan of cereal anyway and find cornflakes very plain so most of the box was left. I wondered idly whether you could use cornflakes as a base for cheesecake rather than crushed biscuits - and it turns out you can!

I used this recipe from RTE Food but I had to almost double the amount of cornflakes as it wasn't anywhere near enough to cover the base of the glass-bottomed pie dish I was using.

To serve 8, you need:
2 bananas
100g chocolate, melted
300g cornflakes
100g caster sugar
100g butter
100ml double cream
400g soft cheese
50g icing sugar
dash of vanilla extract

Melt the chocolate and mix with the cornflakes in a large bowl. Press down the cornflakes into the base of the serving dish and place in the fridge for half an hour to set.

 Heat the butter and sugar in a pan until the sugar has dissolved and carefully place the peeled bananas sliced in half into the pan. Bring to the boil and turn the bananas occasionally until they are caramelised.

Remove the bananas to a plate with a slotted spoon. Keep the caramel over the lowest heat until you are ready to use it otherwise it will start to set hard.

Mix the soft cheese, cream and vanilla and icing sugar and spoon onto the cornflake base.

Slice the banana and place over the top of the cheesecake then drizzle over the toffee sauce.

This was a delicious cheesecake (though I took the banana pieces off mine!) but it doesn't keep long - the cornflake base started to go soggy after the second day. It won't be sitting in our fridge for long I expect anyway!