🎄🍨🍒🍫🍦Claire's Crazy Cakes, Bakes and Kitchen Hacks: Chapter 32 - Don't Trifle with my Trifle!!🎄🍨🍒🍫🍦

Good heavens! It's been a while since I made a food post!! Probably because my oven has been broken. And Just in time for Christmas as well! 😱😱😭😭 Thanks to some incredible friends, I was leant a Weber braai and a small kitchenette oven, which literally saved my bacon this Christmas.

I am going to start, backward, so it would seem, but actually, it was the 1st thing I had to start preparing because trifle needs time to set so that the textures and flavors settle and mature. You need to make it.. or in my case... them, at least 2 days in advance. Then, you can only do the final bit as you're about to serve, which is a great thing because that's also around the time most of us are dead on our feet after all that cooking: and good god did we go all out this year.

I'm horrified as to how many social media posts I've seen about people hating trifle, but I can promise you, everyone who has ever tried my trifle has been converted. Not to toot my own horn here, but I could start a trifle cult 😜

Black Forest Trifle
Last year I made a black forest trifle with dark berries, berry liqueur and chocolate custard and chocolate sponge, but this year I went a wee bit more traditional since my mom joined us!

Righto, so let's get down to business:

Ingredients
Trifle sponge cakes cut into fingers, x 2 (last year I used chocolate, but this year I went more traditional with vanilla)
Black cherries (pitted) 500g
Tinned strawberries x 2
tinned peaches x 2
tinned crushed pineapple x 2
Jelly, x 4 pkts
Instant Custard 1lt x 2
Approximately 350ml Cream-based liqueur (I used milk tart liqueur, but you can use Amarula (original marula or the berry one) or Baileys cream liqueur or Cape Velvet)

pro tip save ALL the drained syrup from your tinned fruit to soak your gammon in*

For decoration
Walnuts or pecan nuts (roughly chopped +/- 150g
mint - fresh: approximately 4 leaves per trifle
Real whole black cherries 2 per trifle
Dark chocolate, grated: +/- 50g

Method: so it's like lasagne for drunk people who want diabetes 😂😂
Firstly, make your jelly the night before. I usually pick just two different colors. I only manage to get two layers in my glass bowls, but the filling-to-sponge ratio is great and two colors of jelly are enough anyway. It also makes it easier to double up so you only have two bowls to juggle with instead of four.

Then, get your glass bowls ready, a chopping board, a tablespoon or two, and a damp cloth for your hands. It's a sticky business. Have a tub for you to chuck your black cherry pips into. This year, it was cheaper by a long shot to by fresh, rather than the tinned ones which are already pitted. It was slightly laborious but the flavour was absolutely amazing. Save a few whole cherries, stalks in, for garnishing later.

Slice your sponge into fingers for easier layering for weirdly shaped bowls.

Then layer in this order:

1. sponge
2. liqueur
3. peaches and pineapple
4. orange jelly
5. Custard

1. sponge
2. The other half of the liqueur
3. Black Cherries
4. Strawberries
5. Strawberry jelly
6. Custard

Refrigerate until needed. You can leave it alone for two to 3 days in the fridge.

When you're ready to serve, top with fresh whipped cream, nuts, grated chocolate and garnish with mint and black cherries!

I have a whole one hidden from the rest of the family which I intend to eat by myself at midnight, in the fridge light as God intended 😂😜😂😜