A Mere Trifle

Sorry about the title of this post, I couldn’t resist. We celebrated the Royal wedding at the house of some friends (who did an amazing job of Britishing the whole thing up with bunting, union jacks, and bacon sandwiches). I decided to make a very British dessert, trifle, to take with me (which was actually an excuse to buy a new glass bowl from Ikea that I’ve had my eye on for some time).

I’m not sure if you get trifle in other countries but if you don’t know what it is it’s basically a layered dessert. First layer is sponge fingers with alcohol (or not) and a fruit sauce poured over the top to soak it, you can then add jelly (or jello if you’re American!) if you choose, then fruit, then a cold custard (that can be flavoured if you like), and whipped cream. My recipe then had caramel on the top but it’s more 1970s to add toasted flaked almonds, or coloured hundreds and thousands.

I don’t have much experience of trifle, my Mum doesn’t like it so it really didn’t feature in my youth. So I just googled lots of recipes and realised that there are A LOT of different ways of making tifle.

First I made a load of boudoir biscuits/sponge fingers using this recipe. That was super easy and very enjoyable, I like making anything that involves a piping bag. I’d say if you’re going to make these then try and make them at least an inch thick, you can do this by moving the piping bag more slowly. (Also I clearly didn’t get a ruler and mark the baking parchment – who would do this?).

I loosely followed this Raspberry and Lemongrass Trifle recipe by Nigella Lawson, but as I couldn’t find lemongrass in my local supermarkets (it’s a Swiss thing) I decided to use the zest from three lemons. It’s funny because the other day I nearly bought a lemon verbena plant and then I thought better of it ‘what on earth will I use lemon verbena for’ I thought. MMmmm lemon flavoured custard it turns out.

I tweaked the Nigella recipe because I didn’t think it would have enough layers to fill my lovely glass bowl, so I added a layer of chopped strawberries. Strawberries were cheaper than raspberries which is why I opted for them.

Making the custard wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be (although you have to watch it like a hawk, and I took my eye off it for a milli second and nearly lost the whole lot).

Apparently there’s a huge debate surrounding the absence or inclusion of jelly in trifle. As I said before I don’t have much experience of trifle but it seems that if you add jelly you’re ‘common’ – seriously who spends time thinking of these things! There’s an entire article about it here.
My trifle didn’t contain jelly (partially because it seems you can’t get jelly here and having made the sponge fingers and the custard I wasn’t about to start faffing around with gelatine) but what do you think? Should trifle contain jelly?

If I’d thought about this further in advance I’d have made the trifle before last weeks pavlova…because I’ve now got 8 egg whites sat in the freezer…oh well we’ll have to make another pavlova soon!

And as so many of you are asking, here’s a picture of Beatrix and I watching the wedding.

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