What a year 2015 has been! I’m totally slack at updating my blog and there are a million projects/trips/photo adventures/things I need to post about but for now this is just a quick post as I’ve been getting so many requests for the recipe of the dessert I made for my family Christmas this year.
For the last few Christmases since being vegan I have prepared a lot of food for the family gatherings – vegan food that everyone can eat. However this year, because I have the most amazing family ever, my mum and cousins made all this beautiful food for the whole family that was mostly all vegan. It was all so delicious – the best tasting food is the food that someone else made for you, am I right!? :)
Anyhoo, still I couldn’t let a whole Christmas go by without making something delicious! I haven’t had trifle in many, many years – I’d never even seen anyone else I know make a vegan trifle before. I wanted it to be summery and berrylicious but without being too sweet or sickly.
2017 edit: Here is my 2016 version of the trifle! Still as popular as ever and I know I’ll definitely be making next Christmas too.
Anyhoo, back to the recipe:
This trifle was a hit with the whole family. People in my fam who don’t usually eat much dessert were coming back for seconds. Yep, seconds! The whole thing was absolutely demolished. I’m sure this will get added to the list of meals I get repeat requests for. And it couldn’t have been more simple to make – it’s basically just about preparing a few different layers and stacking them on top of each other. No need for “special” ingredients – everything I needed I got from my local supermarket.
Ingredients
Note: The quantities I’ve put were what I used but it will be totally dependent on the size of your trifle.
- Vanilla sponge cake, cut into squares (I made my own using this easy peasy cake recipe from Veggieful)
- 4 cups custard – Foster Clarks custard powder is 100% vegan, I used almond milk to make it up and I also stirred through about a tablespoon of icing sugar per two cups once heated just to sweeten it up a little bit and remove the nutty taste from the milk
- 1/2 cup caster sugar (this is for the custard, as per directions on box)
- 4 cups vegan jelly, cubed – you can get vegetarian jelly crystals from most health food/organic shops or otherwise Aeroplane Jelly ready to eat cups are vegan – any flavour will work, I used strawberry
- 5 cups mixed berries – I used strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries
- 4 tablespoons passionfruit pulp
- 4 tins of coconut milk – make sure it’s milk not coconut cream and full-fat not light/low-fat
- 1/2 cup of icing sugar
- 1 peach (or whatever you want to decorate the top with)
Tips
- My main tip is to make your vegan sponge cake a couple of days before you actually want to serve up the trifle. Not only does it save on time on the day of but also it’s better to use a slightly stale sponge so that it doesn’t fall apart so much when covered in custard.
- Ensure you refrigerate your coconut milk at least overnight before you want to prepare your trifle. When you’re ready to make your coconut cream, open the tins to find a white creamy layer has risen to the top of the can and the watery stuff is at the bottom – scrape the cream from the top of your tins and add to a bowl with the 1/2 cup of icing sugar. Whip with electric mixer – it’ll seem like it’s not doing anything for aaaaaggggees (and ages and ages) but eventually after 5 minutes or so the cream will start to whip and come up nice and fluffy
Layers
These are the exact layers I did for my trifle, starting from the bottom to the top. Each layer I spread out to evenly cover the layer below it across the trifle bowl:
- 1/2 of the sponge cake
- 2 cups custard
- 2 cups chopped jelly
- 2 cups mixed berries
- 2 tablespoons passionfruit pulp
- 1/2 sponge cake
- 2 cups custard
- 2 cups chopped jelly
- 2 cups mixed berries
- 2 tablespoons passionfruit pulp
- 2 cups coconut cream
- Decorated top with 1 cup berries and peach slices
And that’s it! Refrigerate until ready to serve. Best to make it no more than a few hours before you’re ready to serve.
Enjoy! And a very happy new year to you all <3
helloyounglionsxo 