Lemon meringue cheese cake

Lots of excellence. Based on this recipe:

250 g digestive biscuits/biscuits sablés, crushed into crumbs
125 g melted butter
250 g unflavoured cream cheese
2 eggs, yolks and whites separated
1 400ml tin condensed milk
60 ml lemon juice
1 tbsp finely chopped lemon zest - don't worry if you have more than 60 ml or 1 tbsp respectively
125 g caster sugar - if you have regular sugar, it'll work too. Just throw it in a coffee grinder and it'll be fine

Preheat the oven to 190. Grease a 20-23 cm cake tin. Mix the biscuit crumbs and butter together to form your cake base, then press firmly into the bottom of the cake tin. Put in the fridge and chill for around 30 minutes.

While you're waiting for the base to firm up, beat together the cream cheese, egg yolks, condensed milk, lemon juice and lemon zest until good and smooth. Once the base is ready, add the cake filling into the cake tin and bake for around 15 minutes.

While the cake part is in the oven, whisk the egg whites until stiff, then add in the sugar little by little and keep whisking until the mixture is glossy. I highly recommend using a machine for this. Spoon this mixture over the cake, then return to the oven and bake for another 10 minutes or until the meringue mixture is golden. Leave to cool, then serve.

It was lovely. Very recommend.

Banoffee

A classic. Based largely on this recipe:

100g butter, melted
250g digestive biscuits (I've used biscuits sablés in France)
400g tin of condensed milk—do not open the tin yet!
2-3 bananas, sliced up
300ml double cream, well whipped
100g chocolate, grated

Remove the label and as much of the glue as you can from the tin of condensed milk, then boil for around 2-3 hours. This will turn the condensed milk into caramel. If you can't wait for this long, you could probably buy a tin of caramel somewhere. Crush the biscuits or throw them into a food processor and pulse until crumbed, then mix well with the melted butter. Press into the bottom and sides a 23cm cake tin and put in the fridge to set. When the condensed milk is ready, leave it to cool for a bit, then spoon over the biscuit base, place the banana slices on top (you could also put the bananas down first and then the caramel—up to you), then finally top with the cream and sprinkle the grated chocolate over the top.

You might not want to eat anything too sweet for a while afterwards, but it's worth it.