Wednesday 21 March 2012

My First Ever Trifle

We put a trifle bowl on our wedding list, so I thought our Christmas Pizza get together was the perfect opportunity to finally use it. There was a lot of discussion about whether a trifle should have jelly in it. It divided our friends. I decided that as jelly took a while to set, I wasn't going to bother!

We lined the trifle bowl with raspberry swiss roll. 

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We tried to make it look as pretty as possible. We were very precise to ensure the way the rolls swirled round was consistent. We made sure it went right up the sides of the bowl.

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We started on both the custard and the fruit at the same time as we needed to get the trifle made in time for the evening. We used frozen berries and added a little sugar and water and jam, to make the fruit layer. 

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We poured this over the swiss roll, trying not to get it all over the sides of the bowl.

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After much stirring, the custard was ready, and we checked that it was tasty, which it was! We poured it over the top of the fruit and realised we had a problem. 

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As you can see, you can barely see the custard! This was not how the trifle should be. Our trifle bowl is far too wide!  We had a pot of cream that we were going to use to make the whipped cream top of the trifle, but as the main shops were now shut, and we were lacking in custard, we made the decision to turn it into custard.  

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Much better now! Check out the pretty swiss roll sides! Look at the steamed up bowl! Also, look at the vanilla fleckle in that custard! Proper good stuff.

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Luckily our local convenience store had some of that elmea stuff (fake cream), that we could then whip up for the top layer.  I used two spatulas to blob it on, trying not to disturb the custard which wasn't quite as set as we'd have liked.

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This added an interesting texture on top, which I quite liked.

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It's beginning to look good there with all it's layers. 

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Next I added some fresh raspberries in the gaps of the cream as a finishing touch. 

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Doesn't it look yummy?

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I think that's probably the most photos I've ever used in one post before! The trifle was pretty darn good, but the custard wasn't set enough. We had some for breakfast the next day and the custard was much more solid, so I'd recommend making trifle a day ahead of when you want to eat it. 



4 comments:

ThisWillBeMyYear said...

You could have done with a better photo of the swirly bottom, don't think these ones do it justice!

Carrie said...

Yeah, the swirly bottom was awesome. It was hard to lift and photograph though!

Lisa said...

It looks wonderful (even without an adequately photographed swirly bottom!). Did that fake cream stuff taste nice? The only version of that I've ever eaten tasted sort of plasticky!

If you're a trifle fan, the best one I've ever made was Saint Nigella's "Anglo-Italian Trifle" - and your bowl looks remarkably like the one in the photo in her book!!

Carrie said...

The fake cream stuff wasn't as nice as proper stuff would have been, but because it was part of the super awesome trifle, it was less noticeable.

Nigella's bowl looks slightly less shallow than mine, but the trifle recipe looks good (although I'm not sure I like amaretti biscuits, aren't they almondy?)