Prue Leith is best-known as a decide on The Nice British Baking Present, the place contestants make elaborate desserts like towering layer desserts and 3D “biscuit” sculptures. However Leith’s favourite dessert to make at house is kind of easy in comparison with these show-stoppers — and requires no baking time in any respect.
“Every time we now have leftover cake, biscuit or pastry of virtually any sort, I flip it right into a trifle,” Leith writes in her newest cookbook, Life’s Too Brief to Stuff a Mushroom, which incorporates 5 recipes for the basic English dessert.
In reality, Dame Leith calls herself the “queen of trifles.”
A basic English trifle options layers of sponge cake soaked in sherry or one other fortified wine, custard cream, fruit, and a whipped cream topping. However you may suppose past the English trifle template to make riffs like a Caramel-Pear-Cheesecake Trifle or Black Sesame Banana Cake Trifle. Right here’s how one can “trifle” absolutely anything.
Christopher Testani
Tips on how to make a trifle
The great thing about a trifle is that you just don’t really want a recipe, and it may be as easy or fancy as you need it to be. You may make every part from scratch, you may lean completely on store-bought components, or you may take a semi-homemade method. Say you might have leftover cake layers — slice them into cubes and prime with ready-made lemon curd or caramel sauce. Or you may physician up store-bought pound cake with do-it-yourself custard cream and contemporary fruit.
Whether or not you’re utilizing do-it-yourself or store-bought components, right here’s a tough method for this choose-your-own-adventure dessert.
- Begin with a big trifle dish or bowl. If you happen to don’t have a trifle dish, you should use a big mixing bowl, ideally glass to indicate off the layers inside. (When assembling, you may line the components you wish to showcase across the fringe of the dish, comparable to slices of jelly roll cake or contemporary fruit for a Blended-Fruit Trifle.)
- Add a cake layer. This might be the basic sponge cake, panettone, pound cake, brownies, stale croissants, or any base that can absorb the flavors of the trifle. Slice the cake into cubes or strips and line on the underside of the dish. Leith likes so as to add an non-obligatory step of spreading the cake layer with one thing candy like orange marmalade, strawberry jam, and even Nutella.
- Soak the cake layer in order for you. For an English-style trifle (or an Italian zuppa inglese), you may soak or brush the cake layer with a liqueur or spirit. Sherry is the basic selection for an English trifle, however you too can choose to make use of amaretto, brandy, rum, limoncello, or a non-alcoholic possibility like a fruit syrup.
- Add a creamy layer. This might be custard, mousse, prompt pudding, and even contemporary whipped cream. (Notice you can add a layer of cream below the primary cake layer in case you choose.)
- High with fruit or different mix-ins. Assume sliced strawberries or bananas, toasted nuts, crushed-up candies, or crushed cookies like Oreos or gingersnaps.
- Repeat. Repeat layers till you get to the highest of the bowl, ending with the creamy layer or a layer of contemporary whipped cream.
- Garnish. High off your masterpiece with extra contemporary fruit, crushed sweet, nuts, or crushed cookies.
Be at liberty to, um, trifle with this template based mostly on what you might have accessible and your favourite flavors. Nonetheless it seems, nobody goes to cross up a giant bowl of cake and cream!