Tuaca and Trifles

Mr AB started moaning recently about the lack of puddings. Which is odd, because he normally moans about there being too many! However, his all time favourite pudding and one guaranteed to put a stop to his moans is an English classic. Trifle!

A piece of butchers wrap in your scales when you weigh the butter saves you cleaning it before the next ingredient

Not the stuff you came to hate with tinned fruit, sloppy jelly, stale sponge fingers and tinned custard with a smear of dairy topping. Oh no, this is a trifle fit for a queen! Fresh fruits, capped with home made lemon jelly, topped by a fresh sponge, in this case spiked with Tuaca, layers of fresh vanilla egg custard and heaps of fresh cream decorated with maraschino cherries and 100's and 1,000's.

Believe me, you never got this at school!

Tuaca is a new bottle in our cupboard, simply because I was curious.  It's delicious!  It's a little bit citrus and a lot of vanilla.  Try it neat, or with a 7Up for a long drink.  If you like seriously sour you can tip it into some SanPellegrino Lemonade, but you might want to make it a double to counter the lemon.  I decided it was perfect for a grown up trifle that didn't taste of Grand Ma's old sherry!

Personally I hate the sponge used in most trifles, so I prefer to make my own.  First of all we take 4 oz or 100g of butter, add 4 oz or 100g of caster sugar - in this case golden caster sugar.  The sponge we are making is a pound cake base - tried, tested and delicious!

Recipes will tell you to cream together the butter and the sugar until smooth.  I'm going to take you one step further.  First cream your butter alone until it is pale and fluffy.  

When you add the sugar it will get gritty and lumpy - keep mixing at a fair rate, 2 or 3 on the Kitchen Aid until you get that pale fluffiness back, and make sure you do before the next step.

A pound cake is the most basic of cakes - equal quantities of flour, butter, sugar and eggs with a raising agent.  It starts as a pound of each, meaning 9 eggs usually, and 4 tsp of baking powder.  In this case we're using a quarter of that - 4 oz each of flour, butter and sugar with 2 eggs and one teaspoonful of baking powder.  Weigh out your flour and set it next to your stand mixer.

2 eggs in shells = just over 4oz or 100 grams, so without shells they're the weight we need.  

When your butter and sugar are light and fluffy you're ready to add your eggs.  I will say this in every recipe where we use eggs, I will keep saying it until I am blue in the face, yet every last one of you, just once, will break an egg straight into a mixture and put contaminated shell in your dessert.  I know you will, because I've done it when exhausted and not thinking straight and had to strain out the whole damned lot to get a tiny piece of shell.  Break your eggs into a bowl before adding and check them.

Look Ma!  No shell!

This is where recipe books get all stroppy with "you must whisk the egg first" or "alternate adding the eggs and the flour only a grain of each at a time".  Ok, let's get this straight.  If I were doing this by hand with a wooden spoon and a ceramic bowl I would absolutely, hand on heart, be following those directions.  However - and it is a *big* however - this machine is a KitchenAid.  It would eat the little hand mixer on a stand a lot of our mothers used for breakfast and barely stop to spit out the debris afterwards.  Take your eggs, put them in the mixer bowl and continue to beat on 1 or 2.

Go on, be brave, and stop being intimidated by your machine.  Make it do what you bought it for!

Don't freak out if the egg doesn't completely blend in immediately, let the machine do the work, it will make a nice smooth paste for you, I promise.  

Motion blur, but you can see, it's mixing those eggs right in!

After a moment or two add your flour, even if the egg still isn't incorporated completely.  Dump it all in there!  In the UK our flour seems to be softer and finer and need less sieving than American flour.  Unless I'm on a new recipe I rarely sieve the flour unless I'm using bulk bought very cheap flour.  Which I don't!

You can see, before I even have time to get the scales bowl away from the mixer, there is already a smooth cake batter appearing.  See?  I told you it'd be ok.  

Don't get too excited, though, because as soon as that batter is smooth and you've worked in the vanilla you want it out from under that beater blade.  Over beating a sponge is as bad as under working it, which is why I said get the flour ready before you pour your eggs.

That batter's nearly perfect, and it's still only on 1.  I even took a picture for you.  Unless you're doing huge amounts of really tough stuff with a KitchenAid you're never going to need to turn it up more than 4.  Even with bread, this machine has enough power to drive through the dough happily at lower speeds.

Just be aware that it doesn't have a soft start, it comes in full power and you better be braced for that!  I often start the blade up out of the mix and then lower it in.  I'm not sure if you're supposed to do that, but it works for me, particularly when your first ingredient is icing sugar!

Although the use of alcohol in vanilla extraction is a tad moot when you're about to tip a large quantity of alcohol all over the dessert it's worth noting that the wonderful Vanilla Mart do an amazing Vanilla that is so alcohol free it is marked Halal by the relevant councils.  It is extracted using glycerine instead of alcohol and it's 10 times stronger.  So you only need one tenth of the amount.  Need two teaspoons? Use a fifth of a spoon.  Much more economical, gives an amazingly good vanilla taste, and combined with their Vanilla Paste it's heaven!  The paste does have alcohol in it, though, so be careful if you're cooking for anyone who has specific dietary needs.  

In goes what looks like not much, but is, in fact, an extremely generous measurement of vanilla.  It was at this point that my brain took a step sideways and I forgot the baking powder.  More of that later.  It looks like there's liquid in there, because there is.  I added a tot or two, maybe three, of Tuaca to start the flavours rolling.  

That small drop really is all you're going to need for the whole tin.  

Whatever sort of tin you've got, for a pound cake it's always worth lining it.  In the case of a tin with a loose base, either push through, a form on a baking tray or even a spring clip tin it *will* leak.  As the butter gets warm and runny you're going to get leakage, and I don't think any of us like cleaning the bottom of the oven any more than necessary!

See?

First cover the bottom and sides of the tin well with a tiny amount of Wilton Cake Release.  If you don't  have this product you're going to either use oil or butter.  The advantage of the Cake Release is that I know it won't leak the same as the batter, this stuff stays put, despite being very slippery!

Cut round your tin about 2 inches or 5cm away from the tin edge, so that you have a piece of parchment larger than the tin base.  Then you want to cut in, about every inch or so, towards the tin, as close to the base as you can get.  I've moved my tin back a bit here so you can see the cuts.  

Push the paper into the tin and press it down across the base.  If you run a thumb nail round the tin it will fit snugly into the corner between the base and the side.

Then go round the edges and press back the frill that has appeared.  This is to keep the side pieces from ending up in the sponge where they can be hard to get out.  The reason we don't go right the way in with our cuts is so that there is a sight lip of intact parchment on the side of the tin before we tuck our cut pieces in neatly.  This helps to keep the batter where we want it.  

Time for baking.  Of course your oven has been preheating so it will be at the right temperature.  You could just throw it in like this, but you're likely to get a very weird looking sponge back with some crispy bits, which is not what we want.  So take a moment to smooth it out a bit, evenly across the tin.

Middle of the oven, don't overcook it, as soon as it looks perfect on that cake tester you whip it out.  It's likely to be very pale still, which is good.  

Ok, so we let our sponge cool in the tin for a while, about 20 minutes or so, then we take it out.  At this point I'm thinking "ok, it's a sponge and not a biscuit, it has bubbles on the top, it's risen a little.  But why is it not taller??? 

Ok, this is where I'm now exhausted, having just cooked another meal for the other blog, and now I just want this damned trifle made and out of my life!  First thing is to get out everything I need.  I keep looking at the sponge and thinking ??? every so often, but hey.  It's a sponge, right?  It's more than twice the height of the batter I put in, so it's ok.  

Hot water ready for jelly cubes - just follow the packet instructions.

You noticed the yellow/lemon packet jelly?  Hartleys.  Not cloying or sickly sweet, but sharp and fresh.  Which is good, because I am in no mood to make jelly from scratch right now, whatever I said way up the top there when I hadn't already had to cook another whole meal! 

Here you can see the cubes already starting to melt, and they haven't even been stirred yet.

This is actually a good thing, because now you know a) I am fallible, b) I am not Super Woman (TM), and c) there are shortcuts you can take without spoiling the whole thing.   I think I've said before that a good shortcut is worth using.  

Did I mention I was tired?  Well, this trifle is supposed to be made with lumps of set jelly.  That just isn't going to happen.  By now I'm in snarl mode and barely able to stand up.  So - another short cut.  It says when the cubes are melted completely top up the fluid with cold water.  I used ice chips.  Set fridge machine to make crushed ice and bring it up to level.  Leave it for a bit until no more chips dissolve, then strain it into another remeasuring jug.  If you're not fortunate enough to have a fridge machine that does ice, just put some ice cubes inside two bags (one inside the other), wrap it in a tea towel, put it on something very hard that won't break and take out a bit of frustration on it with the rolling pin!

Top the second jug up with ice cold water and stick it in the freezer.  Meanwhile, you can get on with other stuff, like whipping the cream.  In the UK we have double, whipping and single cream, each with less fat in them than the preceding one.  Single won't whip, whipping will give you a soft whipped finish, but if you want solid whipped cream you have to go for double.  It's thick and rich and it whips like a dream. 

As soon as you see the stage below, stop.  Immediately.  If you go any further than this point you will have delicious butter for your morning toast, but no cream for your trifle.  You can leave it a bit less firm than this, a bit softer, but you already have a soft custard for that texture, so we take the cream to the harder stage where we can use it to hold things up.  I also added a touch of vanilla to keep it tasting in theme with the rest of the ingredients.  

Next job while the jelly cools and the prepping is done?  Back to that sponge.  It is a sponge, I'll give it that.  It's a bit dense in the middle, bit it's a sponge.  You can see from the pieces on their side, it's a sponge!  But I still keep thinking ???  Because as plump and delicious as it is, there's clearly something not quite right here.

??????

Ok, moving on from the sponge we have a lot of fruit here, and it's pipping time.  Himself and I both love bananas, so that's a given.  July is time for berries and stone fruits, and I raided the local supermarket for all it had fresh and ready to eat that same day.  Then I got home and remembered how much I hate peeling peaches.  

My best tips for this - since I don't like blanching peaches to remove the skins - use a potato peeler.  With cherries, peaches, plums or any other stone fruits, roll them firmly in your hands first.  Cut along the split , where the edge of the stone or pit will be, from the stalk or stalk hole, along the split or dent, all the way from top to bottom and back up the other side.  

I'm afraid I was so tired by this point I got the camera the wrong way up and took upside down photographs.  No wonder I made a mistake with the sponge.  But it still didn't twig!  Having cut the stone fruits in half, twist the two halves against each other, turning them in opposite directions to separate the fruit, just like you would an avocado.  You can then use your thumb or a teaspoon to slide under the stone and just pop it out.  

Technically I could turn the photo up the right way and replace it on the blog page, but I think it helps you to realise that with ME a brief shopping trip by wheelchair, cooking a delicious but fairly simple meal with the help of himself, and getting this far into a trifle is not only physically exhausting, but mentally challenging, too. You become unable to process the data around you, like walls, doors, upright, floors, steps.  The world suddenly becomes a disorientating minefield where a cat running through your field of vision can make you fall over or your feet go numb as one bit of information too many enters your fried brain.  So - welcome to my world!

When the fruit is all prepped, stoned, chopped and ready to go, get the jelly out of the freezer where it's hopefully set a bit.  Something worth remembering here.  If you remove from the freezer a large article such as, say, a full box of valuable meat, so you can place your jug in there for five minutes or so - when you go back and get the jelly out you might want to put that box back in again...  Yeah, we had defrosted steaks for dinner the following night.  Mr AB also made several steak pies and ground some up for other dishes that he could then freeze.  At least we checked the meat temperature as soon as the meat was found and decided if it was cooked first it could be re-frozen.  I foresee a lot of steak in my future.  

Start with a good layer of fruit, using all the fruits, but only half of them at this stage.  Small fruits can be put in whole, whole grapes give a delightful pop when they're chilled, spilling cold, sweet juice into your mouth mid bite.  

When they're all in the bowl I like to give them a good mix.  This is because you end up with clumps of things otherwise.  Mixed up you stand a chance of getting a little bit of each when it's served.

Pour all of your half set jelly over the fruits, pushing down into the jelly any that stick up out of it.  While I was doing this Mr AB was busy stirring large quantities of Tuaca into the sponge cubes for me.  He seemed to think there was nothing wrong with the sponge, so I was still mystified.

You can clearly see the solid bits of jelly at the bottom of the jug.  Even a few minutes in the freezer can make a bad difference.  I think I may use this method in the future, as the results were very good when we ate it the following day.

On top of your jelly you want half of your Tuaca soaked sponge cubes and then half of your cream, roughly spread round the bowl.  This bowl is completely the wrong shape for trifle.  Because it gets wider as you go the portions are going to be a little oddly shaped!  It was, however, the only bowl I had available at the time, so it was used.  

Ok, here comes the next shortcut - Sainsburys now do a lovely, pale, creamy, vanilla custard which is just perfect for a trifle.  It is begging to be added to fruit and sponge and jelly.  So I did.  Then I added the second half of the fruits and the second half of the Tuaca soaked sponge squares.  Those squares were very thirsty indeed!

Since I had forgotten the other half of the banana - did I mention I was exhausted? - I added it with the sponge.

A final layer of cream, topped with some delicious sprinkles and the obligatory Maraschino cherry, and we had trifle!  Yay!  

As you can see the layers of jelly and fruit at the bottom went well, but because of the V shape of the bowl the second layer is obliterated by custard and cream, but you can clearly see fruit, jelly, sponge and cream all at the bottom, then a luscious later of custard with more fruit in it.

This side of the bowl just looks like a fruit fest!  You can just about make out the layering.

So - do we do the dishes, or do we sample it now?  Yeah, like we really put it in the fridge until tomorrow!

The cherry on top

I guess we didn't do too much damage first night.

Although by morning it looked so good and smelled so good that himself had some for breakfast, declaring it delicious when the jelly was set.  

And guess who he left the cherry for?

I do hope you try this recipe with your favourite liqueur or spirit, or even wine.  Sherry and tinned fruit cocktail need never dog your nightmares again, and you'll see for yourself how quick and easy it is.

Oh, when did I realise about the baking powder?  When I loaded the pictures into here and found I didn't have a photograph of adding any.  But hey, it still wasn't a biscuit, right?  It actually worked out very well, giving the sponge a firmness that the lady fingers have without that stale taste.  Delicious!  I should bake more like that.  But only for trifle.  It does go to show, though, how much air gets into that batter with the KitchenAid.



Tuaca Trifle  (printable version)

For the sponge:
4oz or 100g unsalted butter
4oz or 100g golden caster sugar

2 eggs

4oz or 100g flour

2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
Scant quarter cup Tuaca

For the trifle:

Various ripe seasonal fruits.  I used 1 banana, 2 peaches, 2 Victoria plums, half punnett cherries, punnett blueberries, punnett raspberries, punnett blackberries, half punnett seedless black grapes - all pitted, stalks removed, washed, chopped if necessary

1 pack of Hartleys lemon jelly, made up and chilled until half set
1 sponge, cut into cubes and soaked with Tuaca, as much as it will hold without getting soggy
500g tub Sainsburys Vanilla Custard
600ml tub double cream

To decorate:
Sprinkles or 100's and 1,000's
Maraschino cherry

Pre heat oven to 165ºC, 325ºF or gas mark 3.  Grease and line an 8 inch sponge tin.

Beat the butter with a stand mixer until pale and fluffy.  Add the sugar and let it mix until it regains its light texture.  Break the eggs into a bowl and add them in one go.  As soon as they are mixed in add the flour all in one go.

Once this is mixed to a batter add the vanilla, baking powder and Tuaca.  Check the batter mix as you pour the alcohol, you don't want to make it too sloppy.

Pour the batter into the prepared tin and level the top, making sure you push the batter into the sides of the tin as you go.  Bake for 30 to 45 minutes depending on your oven.

When cooked remove the sponge and allow it to cool in its tin for 20 minutes before taking it out and removing the paper from it.  Let it cool completely.

Prepare your jelly according to the instructions on the packet and set in the freezer until half set.

Wash all your fruit and prepare it, chopping large fruits into sections or lumps and removing all stones and stalks.  Small fruits can be left whole.

Using a comport or similar, tall, straight sided container, put half of all the fruits in the bottom of the bowl and mix them together.

Pour over the half set jelly and add half the sponge cubes.  Put this dish in the fridge or freezer, depending on time allowances, and allow the jelly to set completely.

Retrieve the dish and add half the custard.

Spoon over half of the cream and spread it round the dish to cover as best you can.

Sprinkle over the remaining fruit, bar the banana, then cover with the rest of the custard.

Now use the remaining sponge and banana and then top with the remaining cream.

Decorate as wished.

Note:  You can change the layers to suit yourself, but it is traditional to start with fruit and finish with cream.  You can do just one set of layers, or you can do more layers if your dish allows for it.  It really is an as you wish type of dessert.


Enjoy!