16 Jul Trifle testing!
How incredible is the summer heat this year?! Mr Munch and I have turned to the genii at Dyson for the ultimate fan to keep us from melting in our lovely new (and well insulated!) flat. I’ve had a few family birthdays this week and baking is out of the question. Needless to say, turning ovens on in thirty degrees is a no-no unless you’re channeling Hansel and Gretel’s unfortunate witch encounter. The solution? Trifle!!
As per most Cantonese families we will ‘eat everything with four legs except tables’, however over the past few years we’ve had to curb our enthusiastic appetites somewhat due to intolerances. Four of us, including kids, are lactose free and I’m also minimising gluten, therefore this trifle needed to be pimped up to cater for all! One of my favourite blogs is Becky Excell’s Gluten Free Cup of Tea, which I’ve talked about in my previous recipe post for banana cake with salted caramel. She came to the rescue once more with her Ultimate Gluten and Dairy Free Trifle. My brother and I used this as the basis for our trifle, but ended up altering a few ingredients to suit our taste. Here’s what we did!
Using my mum’s trick, we used both strawberry and raspberry jelly. Follow the packet’s instructions and once the jelly is in your trifle dish, drop in some raspberries. They’ll look really pretty suspended in the jelly and add interest to the layers. After a few hours in the fridge to set, add the sponge. We found Mrs Crimbles madeleines which despite being gluten and dairy free smelt gloriously buttery and rich. You could make your own sponge here but we didn’t have the time on this occasion. Place the madeleines in an even layer, breaking a few into smaller pieces to fill in the gaps. Over this goes the custard, we used Alpro’s dairy free custard. It is soy based and has a nice vanilla flavour, with perfect wobbly consistency. Unfortunately we couldn’t find any whippable dairy free cream at Sainsbury’s, according to the original recipe Provamel do a good version. My plan was to do the coconut milk trick which is to refrigerate it for twenty four hours until the cream separates from the water, making it possible to whip. However we didn’t have long enough for this, so we used normal whipping cream. Those lactose free amongst us would simply scoop it off to avoid it! Finally for decoration, we grated some dark chocolate over the top and placed some raspberries in a pretty pattern.
As you can see, this is a very easy assembly job! The brilliant thing about trifle is you can go as fancy or as simple as you like. At Christmas, it’s become my tradition to make a black forest gateaux trifle. All you do is switch the raspberries for cherries, plain sponge for chocolate chip and melt chocolate into the custard, easy! Proportions are also up to personal preference – my family can’t get enough of the jelly so we usually double the normal amount! This particular trifle produced roughly 14 servings but you can easily scale that up or down. All it depends on is the size of your bowl!
I’d definitely recommend this recipe as it’s so easy to do but has maximum impact. Trifle is such a crowd pleaser and it’s stress free as you can make it ahead of time. The bonus is not having to turn on any stoves or ovens! What are your favourite summer desserts? Let me know in the comments and send some pictures if you try this recipe! If you enjoyed this post, give it a like and I’ll see you next week with some more restaurant hunting!
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