Making a Trifle - 1 January 2025

There’s nothing like being half way through something you’re making and suddenly realising that you could actually make a post about it all. That’s exactly what happened when I was at this stage of the ‘trifle making process’ for our New Year Celebration meal :

By this point I had already laid all the sponge biscuits on the base of my bowl and had also finished most of a tin of peaches using some of the juice (not syrup) to soak the sponge biscuits. I had also poured one sachet of raspberry or strawberry jelly which had already set. Then when the jelly was set I’d added a tin of ready-made custard on top. It was at this point that I thought about writing a post about making this trifle.

I used a whole pot of double cream which after whisking for about two minutes with the electric whisk the liquid double cream looked like this :

As I started ‘applying’ the cream on top of the custard I had two thoughts, a) I’ve overworked and overwhisked the double cream and it’s now too thick, b) I should really get an icing bag next time to at least make nice peaks and shapes with this.

After a lot of effort trying to spread the cream on top it finally looked like this :

_{A bird’s eye view of the trifle.}

My family were very happy with the result as the important thing is the taste. Here’s a close-up showing the soaked sponge biscuit, a bit of the tinned peach, custard and cream:

I based this recipe on two videos I've watched recently on You Tube. The first one was really interesting because the presenter showed a Victorian version while wearing Victorian clothes and all the presentation was done ‘in character’. I didn’t use the recipe because I didn’t have ground almonds and didn’t want to add alcohol. The second You Tube recipe is much more accessible for me but had to omit the fruit on top of the trifle as I didn't have any fruit to garnish :

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I think the key word is 'simplified recipe' that's why I could remembered the steps well.

Thank you for reading and Happy New Year 2025 !