Trifle

[resonant]

The kidlet requested a trifle instead of a birthday cake this year. I had never made a trifle (well, I'd made banana puddin', but never a non-Southern trifle). I used the Cook's Country recipe for Tipsy Squire Trifle as a model; substituted a strawberry syrup for the one and a half cups of sherry because, hello, fourteenth birthday party, and anyway I don't even like sherry all that much; substituted lemon curd for jam because yum.

I have the following observations.

1. Yum.
2. I cannot make a sponge cake to save my life. I found a sponge cake recipe (also from Cook's) and followed it to the letter twice, and both times the layers went as flat as a slice of bread as soon as I took them out of the oven. My grandmother, the farmer's wife, is ashamed of me in the great beyond.
3. Store-bought angel-food cake was just fine, truly. I was afraid it would introduce an artificial taste, but it didn't. Mostly I tasted custard.
4. About that time, I began to suspect that the name 'trifle' might be sarcastic. Pretty big undertaking, unless you happen to have some stale cake just lying around and have my grandmother's skill at making custard.
5. If I'd only been feeding my own kid, I still would have left out the sherry, but I would have added some Grand Marnier with the strawberry syrup.
6. Seriously, can I say yum? This stuff was so good.
7. Pretty sure a person could use milk instead of cream in the custard and it would still be delicious.
8. My grocery store did not have any macaroons anywhere. Trader Joe's vanilla wafers were a fine substitute. I don't buy Nilla any more; have you read the ingredients lately? Also, somewhat off topic, most brands of ginger snaps don't list either ginger or molasses. What is the world coming to, Grandma?
9. People who don't like mushy food won't like this.
10. I like mushy food, and in conclusion, yum.

Comments

[northern]

Lemon curd! <3

[resonant]

I could (and do) eat it out of the jar!

[jamjar]

I love a good trifle! It's also good if you use a nice sharp fruit in there as well. My default is raspberries and raspbery coulis, but I have them in the garden. Rhubarb is traditional as well.

Also, if you like trifle, you should try cranachan (blackberries, whiskey in the whipped cream, toasted oats) or peasant-girls-in-the-mist, which is a sort of winter trifle type thing-- layers of fresh apple sauce (I usually use a mix of bramley and cox), cream whipped with a little sugar and a squeeze of lemon, and breadcrumbs (rye or wholemeal), toasted with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. They're both things that I need to make when I have company because otherwise, I'd demolish the whole thing with a spoon in under an hour.

[jesse_the_k]

The names are a treat in themselves!

[resonant]

I used strawberries (even though they're badly out of season) -- don't care for raspberries, but i can see rhubarb being delicious.

Cranachan! Peasant-girls-in-the-mist! They sound delicious and poetic and sort of hobbity. Are the toasted oats ordinary oatmeal, or steel-cut oats, or some entirely different thing?

[jamjar]

I usually use whatever I've got for porridge, so regular rolled oats, mostly. I suspect you can use anything as long as it's not quick-cook or too powdery.

People use a lot of different fruit in their trifles. One of my friends from New Zealand thought that tinned peaches were a vital part of a trifle, right up there with the cream and custard. Bananas, too, though that's never really been my preference. If I'm going to have bananas with cream, I want them in a banoffee pie.

[kinetikatrue]

I actually used to make trifle using store-bought challah, of all things - challah, simple syrup, sliced peaches and raspberries. And whipped cream rather than custard. Haven't done it in years, though - and dunno how I would do it now, since I've pretty much gone off wheat entirely. I've loved it ever since I first had it in England as a kid.

[resonant]

You know, I can see that -- challah is sweeter and richer than bread, but less sweet and rich than ordinary layer cake. And I'll bet store-bought challah is less likely than store-bought cake to have weird chemicals or artificial flavors in it.

I liked the custard a lot, though, even though it was a bit more of a pain than whipped cream.

[aerye]

People who don't like mushy food won't like this.

I was right with you! Until here!

(Except for mashed potatoes, of course. ::g::)

[resonant]

No? It was really, really good, I have to say. But the consistency is about what you'd expect from covering cake with custard and letting it sit overnight.

[bonspiel]

Suddenly I'm imagining a bunch of teenagers accidentally getting sloshed on trifle.

Trifle always seemed like a big fuss to me. I mean, I can imagine back in the day when you'd have leftover cake and stuff it made sense. But there is rarely leftover cake in my house.

[resonant]

I think there are two historical changes that make trifle less realistic now:

- First, we have plastic, which means that a layer cake the second day is nearly as good as a layer cake the first day (whereas before ziploc bags my grandmother might have judged it not fit to eat without doing something to it).

- And we buy eggs in the grocery store. If we had five hens, then we'd get pretty much five eggs a day, whether we needed them or not, which is my theory as to why there are so many dessert recipes from the 1940s that are so very eggy (custard, sponge cake, angel food cake, etc.).

(I also have a theory about when and why pie was easy. I should just find a book on cultural history through desserts.)

[mific]

I love mushy food too, especially trifle, and have a great super-easy recipe (for adults, not 14 yar olds, although you could sub the booze I'm sure). However - these are easy-to-get things where I live, and people living elsewhere (i.e. just about everyone) will have to sub away freely with what they can find locally.

1. Bottom layer is store-bought sponge cake or the local equivalent. Never make it! Here, they sell "trifle sponges" in the supermarkets, but then we were colonized by the English more recently than some, and there have to be a few advantages to that.

2. Tip sweetish booze liberally over the sponge. I like a mix of sherry and almond liqueur (Amoretto) but any fruity, non-chocolatey flavoured liqueur is fine, or a sweetish port would work. Stick your finger into the sponge in places to make wells and get the booze in there. I like the edge of the almond liqueur with the boysenberries (see below).

3. Cover with a generous layer of canned boysenberries. Not too much of the juice if they're in a lot. I tip off most of the juice into a bowl, add the fruit then add back some of the juice so as not to drown it.

4. Cover with pre-made custard. Again, we can buy this locally in cartons in the milk section of supermarkets. Very handy and perfectly good for this sort of trifle. If you can't buy it I'm afraid this step will involve cooking - milk and custard powder - use full-cream milk as custard curdles with trim milk, and heat it carefully for the same reason.

Serve and eat! Ideally with whipped cream - it needs to chill in the fridge for a few hours and only gets better overnight.

[resonant]

Completely different food culture you have there! I've seen canned boysenberries but never tried them. I have never, ever seen custard or custard powder in a grocery store, and I don't think I'd buy American custard powder if we had it; it would probably be all high-fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil and other industrial products.

I did expect to find sponge cake in the grocery store, but they didn't have any -- maybe because it was after ten on a Saturday night.

[mific]

Heh - coincidentally, I was reading old due South fics and happened on "Too Sweet" - the nanaimo bars one by you in which Fraser wants custard powder and Ray's never heard of it, so yeah, very different food cultures. :)

[jesse_the_k]

re: Flavorful cookies. The MiDel brand offers Ginger! and Cinammon! snaps which really snap. And they offer them in regular and gluten free. They're so tasty that I've had non-celiac guests eat the GF versions and comment, "Good cookies."

Also very crispy, so good for cheesecake crusts and the like. The pecan versions are, sadly, terrible.

[resonant]

Sounds good! Any more I feel like I have to read the labels with eyes like a hawk, because I buy a familiar brand and get it home and it tastes unfamiliar!

[saraht]

Triiiiiiiiiiiiiiifle. When I go to England, I often find myself buying even the crappy Sainsbury brand so I can have some. One thing the English are good at is CUSTARD-BASED DESSERTS.

[resonant]

I hadn't made custard for years and years, but it wasn't difficult at all, and so tasty.