Prue Leith Is the ‘Queen’ of This Dessert — and It’s Nearly Easy

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 dwelling is sort of easy in comparison with these show-stoppers — and requires no baking time in any respect. 

“Each time we now have leftover cake, biscuit or pastry of virtually any kind, 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. 

The truth is, 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 possibly can suppose past the English trifle template to make riffs like a Caramel-Pear-Cheesecake Trifle or Black Sesame Banana Cake Trifle. Right here’s the right way to “trifle” absolutely anything. 

How one can make a trifle 

The great thing about a trifle is that you simply don’t actually need a recipe, and it may be as easy or fancy as you need it to be. You can also make all the pieces from scratch, you possibly can lean solely on store-bought components, or you possibly can take a semi-homemade strategy. Say you could have leftover cake layers — slice them into cubes and prime with ready-made lemon curd or caramel sauce. Or you possibly can physician up store-bought pound cake with do-it-yourself custard cream and recent fruit. 

Whether or not you’re utilizing do-it-yourself or store-bought components, right here’s a tough formulation for this choose-your-own-adventure dessert. 

1. Begin with a big trifle dish or bowl. If you happen to don’t have a trifle dish, you need to use a big mixing bowl, ideally glass to indicate off the layers inside. (When assembling, you possibly can line the components you need to showcase across the fringe of the dish, reminiscent of slices of jelly roll cake or recent fruit for a Blended-Fruit Trifle.)
2. Add a cake layer. This may very well be the basic sponge cake, panettone, pound cake, brownies, stale croissants, or any base that may 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.
3. Soak the cake layer in order for you. For an English-style trifle (or an Italian zuppa inglese), you possibly can soak or brush the cake layer with a liqueur or spirit. Sherry is the basic selection for an English trifle, however it’s also possible to choose to make use of amaretto, brandy, rum, limoncello, or a non-alcoholic choice like a fruit syrup.
4. Add a creamy layer. This may very well be custard, mousse, immediate pudding, and even recent whipped cream. (Word you could add a layer of cream beneath the primary cake layer in the event you favor.)
5. Prime with fruit or different mix-ins. Suppose sliced strawberries or bananas, toasted nuts, crushed-up candies, or crushed cookies like Oreos or gingersnaps. 
6. Repeat. Repeat layers till you get to the highest of the bowl, ending with the creamy layer or a layer of recent whipped cream.
7. Garnish. Prime off your masterpiece with extra recent fruit, crushed sweet, nuts, or crushed cookies.

Be happy to, um, trifle with this template based mostly on what you could have out there and your favourite flavors. Nonetheless it seems, nobody goes to move up a giant bowl of cake and cream!