Sunday, October 16, 2005

Diary of a trifle


Strawberries!
Originally uploaded by JellyGirl.
I managed to take this one picture with my camera before the battery went complete flat. Unfortunately I was not able to take anymore of the trifle, because it turned out really well. Layers of pink at the bottom, orange, red and white for the middle fruit layer, and yellow for the custard, topped up with white pure cream and red strawberries. Yum.

So here's how I did it:

1. Find massive huge bowl that would hold trifle large enough for 20 people. I didn't have a big glass bowl, so I used a corningware bowl.
2. Layer the bottom with sponge lady fingers. I did two layers since it was such a deep dish.
3. Prepare raspberry jelly as instructed on the packet. I added less water to make the jelly thicker and sweeter. Poured jelly mixture over the sponge fingers until they were immersed. It took me 3 jelly packets for that.
(Here's something I forgot to do: drizzle sherry over everything for an extra kick)
4. Let the jelly and sponge fingers set for about half hour in the freezer.
5. Slice up the strawberries, and sprinkle some sugar on them to sweeten.
6. Layer canned mandarin oranges, lychees and sliced peaches and the fresh strawberries above the jelly and sponge fingers. Freeze overnight.
7. Prepared about three servings of custard. Used Bird's custard powder and banana milk, regular milk and some sugar. (The banana milk was a mistake buy but it turned out good)
8. Spread custard above fruit layer and freeze again. (And here I made another mistake of freezing it overnight. Of course the custard turned out rock solid. In future, I'll make the custard just hours before serving and let it chill in the freezer for about an hour)
9. Day of serving, added the cream on top of the custard. I used a mixture of whipping cream (which I hand whipped) and since I was lazy,Pure Cream. Added some sugar to sweeten the cream, and for the piece de resistance, scattered more sliced strawberries on top.
10. Thawed entire trifle for about 4 hours before serving.

All in all, although I made some mistakes, everything turned out well, including the frozen custard. Looks like I'll be making this again, but I think I'll change a couple of things the next time round.

5 comments:

Ang Ku Kueh said...

arrrgghhhhhh! hungry! thanks for the recipe!!! :) will try it in my new kitchen!!

Unknown said...

Guess what? I looooved your trifle so much last Friday (as if the 2 huge helpings I had didn't clue u in), that I HAD to recreate it on Sunday. I did it entirely based on our conversation cos' I didn't find your step-by-step here till now! Am happy to report that even though I bunged everything in, jelly, custard, cream, fruit et al in layers, at the same time, it turned out beautifully when I pulled the mixture out of the freezer 2 hours later. Plus I added half a bottle of Grand Marnier and lashings of Cointreau - (hic) YUM! Thank you for being the inspiration!

Vera said...

i love trifles!
the boyfriend's mother made me a huge one to bring back to leeds.. and then she told me i better finish it within 3 days..cos if not it will turn bad.. so now i feel very fat.. hahahahahaa

JellyGirl said...

AKK: Did you just move house or something? Yes yes make! It's dead easy!

Deetourguide: You are most welcome! I'm so happy you enjoyed the trifle and glad to hear trifle-making is proliferating! hehe...you must make some more for me to try, your version sounds fabulous!

Fat fingers: Ya all that cream and sugar that goes in...scary! But isn't it just soo delicious? I could eat trifle all day!

Ole' Wolvie said...

I am not really fond of the strawberries we have in Singapore, but those looked good.