Crunchy Caramel Cups

Very quick and practical, easy to make, this recipe will be a life saver for your dinner parties and kids' birthdays. This is my latest post from my Turkish blog, so I'll start with this one. It makes me feel like it's a nice beginning, the first recipe being a very easy, very yummy, light dessert. You can serve these cups with or without ice cream on top, it's up to you. Also, I specifically used caramel biscuits, the lightly burnt flavour, plus the crunchy texture of the biscuits work very well. You can choose to use ginger biscuits or crunchy cookies or any other type you fancy. That is the best thing about deserts in cups, you get the main formula and you can experiment with flavors and tastes. All you need is something creamy, something crunchy and something mellow. In this recipe I used delicious little local bananas with dried coconut because I think these two tastes go very well, both exotic, both warm and both leave a tingling sensation on your tongue. My other favourite combinations are chocolate and hazelnuts; caramel and milk; rose and pistachio (I'll write more about it soon, you can create amazing desserts especially by using rose flavored Turkish delights); or cocoa and gum mastic. I really like the fact that with a recipe like this, you are flexible. You can use bits and pieces from your kitchen cupboards. Instead of bananas, you can use strawberries, raspberries, pineapples; instead of decorating with chocolate chips, you can add hundreds and thousands or crushed peanuts, candies or you can try shaving chocolate, or add wafers. I think I've said too much, let's cut to the chase! Bon apetite.

Ingredients:
2,5 cups of milk
2 soup spoons of rice flour (or corn starch)
1 soup spoon flour
1 soup spoon margarine
4 soup spoons of granulated sugar (if you really have a sweet tooth, you can make it 5 or 6 spoonfuls)
1/2 a packet of Lotus caramel biscuits (byou can use ginger biscuits, digestives or any other type of crunchy biscuit or cookie you like)
2 soup spoons of dried and shredded coconuts
2 little bananas
1 packet of vanilla sugar or preferably, half a vanilla pod

How to:
1. Pour in the milk, rice flour, flour, sugar and margarine in a sauce pan and cook until it thickens. Generally, I don't tend to use margarine in my recipes, but with this one I thought a little goes a long way. So when you add only a spoon of margarine, it'll really transform the taste and make your pudding more creamy. Once it starts to boil and makes little bubbles in and aroun, turn off the heat.
2. Add the vanilla and bananas and mash all up with a hand blender. The bananas have to blend in the mixture smoothly, if you see some tiny bits, leave them as they are and they make your pudding rustic. Then add the dried coconuts and mix with a spoon.
3. Take out your cups or glasses and pour in two spoonfuls of pudding, top it with the crunched biscuits, then do this one more time to create another layer. In this step, I didn't mash the biscuits so much, I wanted to have big chunks at the same time. 
4. After you add two layers of pudding and biscuits top everything up with the rest of the pudding and decorate with chocolate chips. Don't forget to add your chocolate chips, when the pudding has cooled down, otherwise the chocolate chips will melt and look messy. In my picture above, I used two different glasses to show two different presentations. It's up to us to get creative! This recipe is very good with kids as well, it has fresh fruit and milk, so you can choose their favourite chocolate and candies. Bon apetite!