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| Left: Jim Cherub. Right: Bob Cherub. Cherubim, in plural. Jim: "What the blitherin' heck is she rabbiting on about? Bob: "Search me, mate. I wish she'd just shaddap and get to the dessert!" |
Okay:
Devil's Trifle. We make it for New Year almost every year, and it's time I stopped waxing rhapsodic and gave you the recipe! It's dead simple and you may not believe how good this is (or how nobody came up with it before Jen did, about twelve years ago).
You will need:
A large jar of Morello Cherries (You can use an equivalent amount of fresh cherries, plus a cup of any dark fruit juice. Jarred cherries work just as well and are available year-round. They're also a hulluva lot cheaper.)
A large chocolate sponge roll, or an equivalent amount of any spongy chocolate cake
A port wine flavored jelly mix (Americans, you'll be calling it jello; don't worry, it's the same thing. You can use black grape, or even blackberry flavor ... port wine is best)
A glass of sweet sherry (or brandy, Drambuie, Bailey's etc., etc. ... booze is entirely optional)
50-100g (2-3oz) of good quality milk chocolate (you can use dark chocolate, if you like the tang and zest of something a little bitter amid all the sweetness. Also, you can use orange or peppermint chocolate for an added zing.)
A cup-and-a half of whipping cream
Custard powder mix -- you'll need about 4 tablespoons
Drinking chocolate powder (not baking chocolate., ie. cocoa powder)
Chocolate sprinkles (optional -- see below)
500mls /about a pint of milk (fat free milk, if you prefer: makes nooo difference, and will cut some of the calories out of this "energy bomb." Be warned: this dish is so easy to eat, you could inhale the whole thing in a single-handed act of self-indulgence, and look around for more.)
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| Not Jen's granny's trifle dish ... but similar. |
(In fact, we do have a trifle dish, but since it's about 100 years old now (no joke), we don't use it. We actually use a pyrex glass casserole, because it's handy, the right size, and sturdy. The original -- antique, by now -- trifle dish comes down to us as an heirloom from a great-grandmother. It can be traced back in living memory to 1935, but by all accounts was old by then. There's also a damask tablecloth going back to the same era, and we believe both came from Ireland, c. 1900, with a young lass called Mary Armstrong, who was fleeing "the troubles" with her two children, and is Jen's "Irish granny." (Actually, great-grandmother.) Okay, that's enough soap opera, let's get back to the food!
Slice the cake into centimeter / half inch wedges and lay it down all over the bottom of your dish, bowl or casserole. Cut out shapes to fill the empty spaces and pack it down, so there's a good, solid layer of cake in there. When you're happy with the cake, take the optional booze and sprinkle it over, so the cake takes it up. Technically, you can use as much as you like, but don't over-saturate the cake, or you'll wind up with sludge in the bottom of the dish. Delicious sludge, but it can look rather ... gross ... as you ladle it out.
Drain the cherries well -- keep the liquid. Don't quaff it for the pleasure of drinking sweet cherry juice, because you're going to need it. If you're using fresh cherries, organize a cup of dark fruit juice right now. Lay the cherries out evenly, all over the cake.
Break up the bar of chocolate into small bite size pieces and add these in among the cherries. Keep back a small wedge of the chocolate for grating over the top at the end of the construction.
Make up the jelly mixture with just enough boiling water to get the crystals to dissolve properly -- then top it off with the cold liquid from the jar of cherries (see?). Add cold water to get to something like 500mls / ~17oz, or as the jelly mix indicates. Taste it. Sweet enough?? Depending on the tartness of the liquid from the cherries, or other fruit juice, you might need to add a dab of sugar (or stevia, monk's fruit, whatever you use to save on calories). The jelly should be quite cool -- doesn't have to be cold, cool is fine...
Carefully ladle the jelly mixture over the cake and fruit, so everything is covered. Put the whole shebang in the fridge for a few hours to set the jelly.
When you're happy with the set of the jelly ... let's put the rest of this baby together!
Make up about two cups of custard, using DOUBLE the given instructions as per powder, plus the milk, and adding plenty of drinking chocolate (not unsweetened cocoa powder! If baking chocolate is all you have ... add sweetener, or your chocolate custard will double as poison) to turn boring, boring vanilla custard into chocolate custard. Check the sweetness of the custard at this point. Many custard powders give instructions which make custard that ain't "commercially" sweet. You might like to adjust this. When you double the amount of powder to a given volume of milk, you won't get custard: you will get "chocolate concrete." This is fine, it's supposed to happen...
Let the chocolate concrete cool, dump it into a mixing bowl, add about four tablespoons of whipping cream, and hit this with a stick-mixer (or else put the whole "custard disaster" into the blender and mix till smooth). The result is an amazing, "stand up for itself" custard that, chilled, can be carved. (Yep, you can use the vanilla version of this to make vanilla slices. Or this, to make chocolate custard slices...)
Lay the custard on top of the cherries in huge blobs, and work it gently into the corners. Fill the whole space evenly and level it off. You can add chocolate sprinkles to this layer -- if the trifle is to be dished up immediately, they'll keep their "crunch," and give an extra "wow" to the dish. If the trifle is to be kept till later, leave out the sprinkles, since they almost dissolve in a couple of hours.
While the custard was cooling, you cunningly used the time to whip about a cup-and-a-half of cream, with "drinking chocolate powder to taste." (Repeating, don't use "cocoa powder," which is baking chocolate (bitter) ... or if you must use baking chocolate, add a healthy amount of sweetener. You can have it medium chocolaty, or incredibly chocolaty. Your call. Start with two tablespoons of the drinking chocolate, and go from there. Get the cream good and stiff: it has to stand up for itself... Spoon the cream on top of the custard and work it into a nice, level layer, even throughout. Grate the last wedge of chocolate over the top...
...and you're done. It should serve 8 - 12, though Dave -- with the marathon cyclist's appetite -- has been known to inhale a quarter of it in one sitting and say, "Delicious!" It also keeps perfectly in the fridge for up to three days.
Devil's Trifle! Enjoy!
