English Trifle
The English trifle is a quintessential dessert that has graced British tables for more than five centuries. This decadent-looking treat is simply luscious and full of flavors and textures. If there was ever a time to fall face first into a dessert, this is it. Not only is this a delicious dessert but it is also super simple. You can whip this up within half an hour with a mixture of store bought and homemade ingredients.
Essentially it’s a layered dessert that starts off with a base of sponge cake or pound cake, perhaps soaked in alcohol—but this is optional only if children are not involved. This is followed by a thick layer of creamy custard, then a layer of fruit preserve or fresh fruits, sometimes both and then finally a deep layer of fresh whipped cream. Trifles are also really forgiving. If you over bake a cake or purchase a less than stellar store bought cake it can easily be fixed and magically turned into trifle by layering it with custard, jam, chocolate and whipped cream.
History
The modern day trifle evolved from two similar desserts—Fool and Syllabub. I know what you are thinking, there’s a dessert called Fool? Well, it’s actually a “Fruit Fool”, and originally the name trifle and fool was used interchangeably for this dessert. Fruit fool is just pureed stewed fruit folded into sweet custard. Syllabub is a Cornish dessert made from curdling sweet cream or milk with an acid like wine or cider. It’s honestly that easy. A bit too easy for my preference actually. I like how these two desserts have evolved to the decadent trifle we know today.
The earliest known record of the name trifle was in a recipe for a thick cream flavored with sugar, ginger and rosewater which is found in a 16th century book of English cookery called The Good Huswifes Jewell. Jelly is then recorded three centuries later in the 19th century in another English Cookbook called The Art of Cookery by Hannah Glasse. Overtime, so many variants developed and include a myriad of ingredients like macaroons, ratafia biscuits, chantilly cream, raisin wine, and even ginger ale. According to many culinary scholars, trifle may also be the origin of the modern sandwich cakes like red velvet cake, carrot cake, black forest cake etc. I betcha didn’t know that! I didn’t either. Lol you learn something new everyday!
Speaking of variations, of course there are other cultures that also have their own versions of the trifle. The Scots have a similar dish called Tipsy Laird, made with Scotch Whiskey, ooh boozy! Similarly, in the Southern US, another similar dessert exists and it is called Tipsy Cake, probably brought to this continent by the settlers. The Italians have their own version of the trifle which they call Zuppa Inglese, literally translating to “English Soup”. Then there is the Creole Trifle, also known as Russian Cake which is more of a cake soaked with alcohol, syrup and fruit juices. A similar dessert in Germany and Austria goes by the name Punschtorte. The Filipinos also have a similar dessert called Crema de Fruta, which is more like a layered cake that has all the ingredients similar to trifle but with local fruits like mangoes and pineapples.
Anyway, you get the gist of this. Any and all sandwich cakes that you see nowadays evolved out of the English Trifle. I know somewhere in the recipe below I shaded the British for taking (often forcefully) from other cultures. But Trifle really and truly is a British dessert created by the English folks. By now you all know me pretty well and I know that you know that I can go on more about history but I think it’s time for the recipe!
Beef Sautéed with Peas & Onions!
Wait a minute, before we get to the recipe for English Trifle, does anybody remember that Thanksgiving episode of Friends where Rachel screwed up the trifle? Rachel was entrusted with making a dessert and she chose to make a traditional English Trifle, which involves many layers of ladyfingers, jam, custard (made from scratch, she said so!), raspberries, and beef sautéed with peas and onions, topped with bananas and cream. Yeah beef! Turns out the beef in the trifle was because Rachel was following Monica’s cookbook and two of the pages were stuck together, and her English trifle is actually half shepherd's pie. The episode was called “The One Where Ross Got High” and here is Part 1 and Part 2.
Recipe — English Trifle
Serves: 4
An English trifle needs sponge cake or pound cake, often soaked with alcohol, then layers of custard, jelly, preserves, fresh fruits and whipped cream. Many varieties exist, some forgoing fruit entirely and instead using other ingredients, such as chocolate, coffee or vanilla. This is all about personal preference. I decided to keep this one close to an authentic English Trifle, but substituted the custard for a white chocolate mousse and added a layer of lemon keeerrdd, lol lemon curd. Did anyone get my Great British Bake Off reference for Lemon Keeerrdd?
This recipe calls for only 4 servings of trifle. Traditionally, trifles are a favorite dessert to serve when entertaining, perhaps this is why it’s so popular during Christmas and Easter. They can feed a crowd—children love them, they are easy to serve, there are so many fabulous flavor combinations and they are a lighter alternative to other dense and rich desserts during the holidays. If you are making it for Easter or baby shower or bridal shower or any kind of get together (now that more of us are getting vaccinated and things are starting to open up), make sure you double, triple or quadruple this recipe.
I used individual trifle bowls but if you want to make it in a large trifle bowl, you will want to increase this recipe by 3x or 4x. I already know a lot of you will ask about the mini trifle bowls, so here you go. Alternatively, you could also use these mason jars, which are way waaaaaay cheaper.
The Cake
The base of the trifle is going to be some form of a generic cake. It’s up to you whether you want it to be homemade or store bought. For once, I decided to make my life easy (more like I was forced to) by not making everything from scratch and just kind of wing it. Lol let me tell you what happened.
So initially I had plans for baking a fluffy sponge cake, only to realize I am completely out of flour. This is really unusual because I never run out of staple ingredients. Hear me out when I say my backup salt has its own backup salt, backup rice has its own backup rice. You know when everyone was freaking out and buying bags and bags of flour and rice at the beginning of the pandemic, girlfriend here was chillin 'at home already well stocked. I suppose one good thing came out of suffering from years of anxiety. My panic buying habits and shopaholic tendencies had me well-prepared for an unforeseeable national disaster.
Ok so back to baking a bake, I mean a cake. That’s fine! You know what, I have a box of Betty Crocker cake mix that I can use. I will make a pound cake instead. Welp, that idea went out the window as well. The milk, as in cow milk, is well past it’s expiration. We don’t drink as much dairy and usually have more plant-based milks at home. But I am not using oat milk or almond milk in my pound cake...blegh! Crap, now what do I do? It’s pretty late and I really don’t feel like going to the grocery. Surely, there must be a shortcut I can take.
As I am leaning over my kitchen counter, stress eating madeleines, telling Arafat all about my cake dilemma, it struck me that I could use…madeleines! They are literally baby sponge cakes that are full of so much flavor. I know some prude is going to read this and go “omg to make matters worse, she used madeleines, like that’s not even British, it’s French!”. Um excuse me? Ma’am-Sir? What exactly is British? Almost everything that is quintessentially British is….stolen from another culture, or what they called “colonies”. Even the queen herself is German! The House of Windsor is really the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Ooof put some ice on that burn!
Anyway enough with my shade. 👀 Use your creative imagination and go for any kind of generic cake that you like. I went for madeleines aka shell shaped baby sponge cakes, instead of a big ol’ sponge cake or pound cake. I am not going to judge and I don’t care if the highfalutin readers won’t budge. In the end, it worked in my favor, what the heck am I gonna do with a big cake when I only planned on making 4 mini trifles for the two of us still stuck in quarantine mode?!
Raspberry Preserve
Next up is the raspberry preserve or most people know it as raspberry jam. Now you can absolutely use a store bought raspberry jam. May I suggest Bonne Maman? Not only do they make great products but this company may possibly have a heartwarming origin that goes back to the days of World War II and the Holocaust. I decided to make some good old fashioned raspberry preserves, because I can. Lol not because I had a box of raspberry that was going to go bad because I got tired of making healthy smoothies. Heh! 👀
Fresh Raspberries - 1 cup
Sugar - 1/2 cup - 1 cup, depends how sweet you like your jam
Place raspberries in a large stainless steel or enamel saucepan. Bring to a full boil over high heat, stirring continuously. Boil hard for 1 minute, continuing to stir. Add sugar, return to a boil, and boil until mixture reaches 220˚F on a candy or instant thermometer. If you don’t have a thermometer, just wing it, you just need a good jelly like consistency.
Fresh Lemon Juice - 1 tbsp
Lemon Zest - 1 tsp
Add lemon juice and lemon zest, then stir very well. Remove from the heat and cool or refrigerate. For this recipe we are making only 1 cup. If you have extra or want to make more, you can pour it into a clean jar and keep it refrigerated for up to 4 weeks.
Lemon Curd
I used store-bought lemon curd. I love a good homemade lemon curd but I was too lazy okay? Also, thanks to the Great British Bake Off, we cannot say lemon curd the same again. It’s always going to be LEMON KEEEERD. #IYKYK! Yes, as usual I did use the Bonne Maman lemon curd and no this is not a sponsored post. When I find a brand I love, I am stuck with them forever. Oh I heard the Trader Joe’s lemon curd is good too. Anyway, if you are hankering for a recipe from scratch, here is one.
Sugar - ⅔ cup
Lemon Zest - 1 tbsp
Pulse the sugar and lemon zest in a food processor until they are totally incorporated and a pastel yellow color. This step is optional but it really takes that lemon flavor up a notch.
Unsalted Butter - 6 tbsp
Fresh Lemon Juice - ⅓ cup
Salt - just a pinch
Egg Yolks - 4
Using a stand mixer or a hand mixer, cream the butter and beat in the sugar and lemon mixture. Add the egg yolks, 1 at a time, and then add the lemon juice and salt. Mix until combined. Pour the mixture in a heatproof glass bowl. Set bowl over a saucepan filled with two inches of simmering water. Make sure the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water. Whisk the mix constantly until thickened, about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool or refrigerate.
This will make about 1 cup of lemon curd and can be refrigerated for up to 10 days.
Note: Do not use direct heat to cook the lemon curd, it can burn really easily. Also do not use an aluminum or metallic bowl when cooking the lemon curd, use a heatproof glass bowl. The acid from the lemon can react with the chemical composition of the metallic bowl and the lemon curd may end up tasting metallic. The same goes for using any whisk or spatula when stirring - nothing metallic, use silicone based.
White Chocolate Mousse
White Chocolate Chips - ½ cup, make sure its good quality, I recommend Ghirardelli
Heavy Cream - ⅓ cup
Place white chocolate chips and ⅓ cup heavy cream in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is completely smooth. Remove from heat and cool at room temperature until the mixture has thickened slightly, about 30 minutes.
Heavy Cream - ½ cup
In a separate bowl, using a hand mixer or stand mixer, beat ½ cup heavy cream until stiff peaks form. Using a rubber spatula, fold the whipped cream into the white chocolate mixture. The mixture should be completely smooth and creamy. Cover and chill for at least 2 hours.
Whipped Cream
Again, you could use store bought or make it from scratch - which is the easiest thing you can ever make.
Heavy Cream - 1 ½ cups, make sure it’s cold like chilled
Powdered Sugar - 1 tsp
In the bowl of a standing mixer or a large mixing bowl (whichever bowl you use, make sure it’s cold), beat the heavy cream and sugar and together on medium low speed until foamy, then slowly increase the speed to high. Continue to beat just until you have soft peaks, about one minute. Set aside.
Trifle Assembly
Aaah time to assemble the trifle!
Step 1: In the bottom of each jar or trifle dish, place a layer of your cake of choice.
Optional Step: Brush the cake pieces with the cream sherry. Keep in mind, with the addition of alcohol, this becomes an adults-only dessert.
Step 2: Top with a layer of raspberry preserves, followed by a single layer of raspberries, if you want.
Step 3: Top with a layer of lemon curd.
Step 4: Top with a layer of white chocolate mousse.
Step 5: Finally a layer of whipped cream to decorate. Cover and refrigerate for at least 3-4 hours, or ideally overnight.
Step 6: Before serving, uncover and decorate with a dollop of lemon curd and a few raspberries.
Ps. You can alternate the steps to your liking. There is no one right way of doing this. Just make sure to have fun!
And that brings us to the end of our culinary journey in the United Kingdom, for now. Does anyone have an idea which new country or new cuisine we are featuring next? Knowing all my readers, I know you will enjoy the next featured cuisine. Stay tuned and share @TheSpiceOdyssey with all your friends and family!
