hi there welcome to this week's show getting closer to Christmas I thought I'd show you a fantastic dessert it's a nice alternative to Christmas pudding for those of you who don't want to go that traditional route and perhaps you want something just a little bit lighter this is a trifle and it can made a number of different ways really the base ingredients are the same but you can vary them and you can layer them up and you can put them into just about anything they look fantastic however in something that's glass and the reason being is there are lots and lots of layers and so you want to be able to see those layers beautifully of course if you don't have that then an ordinary bowl will do it'll taste just as great let's have a look at the ingredients we're going to be using now you can either make your own sponge roll and you can also use the jam rolls those ones that are like a Swiss roll with jam inside them or you can buy them already pre-made and that's what I'm going to do today just to save a little bit of time because we often don't have a lot of time around Christmas we're also going to be using some fruit now you can use fresh fruit or you can use frozen fruit and thaw it and that's what I tend to do because I use the juice then as well to make my jelly now I'm going to be using two colored jellies today I'm using a lime jelly and I'm using a raspberry jelly now these jellies are actually the aeroplane jellies that have just been released and these have got 25% less sugar so this might be quite lovely for those of you who are trying to cut down on some of those naughties although Christmas time it's very difficult to do but they are quite divine and in fact they also have this great lime flavor so I'm going to use that today in my trifle as well and this is the tropical but I'm going to use the raspberry so I've already pre-made these and if you want to look at how to make these you can come back to the website black book cooking calm and you'll be able to see how to make up the jellies incidentally if you want to give your trifle just a little bit more of a kick what you can also do when you make up the jellies it's a mixture of adding the crystals to a bowl adding some boiling water to that and then adding cold water so if you want to give it a little bit of a kick instead of adding just cold water you can actually add alcohol then a little bit of vodka rum if you like tequila if you like it doesn't really matter they make great jelly shots in the line one particularly mixed with those spirits is lovely for Christmastime to give people a kick before they get into the festive season but you can also do it with the jellies for your trifle and it will give it a little bit more flavor as well we also need some whipped cream and we're going to be using some alcohol now the alcohol you use is purely up to you I tend to use masala I like the flavor it blends really nice with the cake and the cream and of course we're going to be using an egg custard sauce and I've pre-made my egg custard sauce and you can see how to make that as well if you come back to the website there is a video that will show you how to make that very easy very simple so let's get started the first thing we're going to do is we're going to prepare our bowls okay now let's have a look at some of the options that we can use to put our trifle into now a bowl will always work beautifully and as plain as possible but glass is ideal this one as you can see it's not too high so I won't have to do too many layers in this to fill this one up so I'm going to make one in the large bowl to show you what that's like and that's great if you're feeding a lot of people because you can just do it all in one hit it'll save a lot of time for you you can also do it in a tall sort of thin glass a bit like this this one makes a really nice one looks like a parfait then and it's lovely if you don't have too many people to serve they can get a whole one of those each I also use just a glasses as well now this one is just a normal drinking glass but it really looks quite lovely especially perhaps with a little bit of brown paper wrapped around here and then I put a little bit of Christmas ribbon around the glass as well and it's a really nice size it's not too much of the trifle per person and they really come out quite nicely and they don't take up a lot of room in your fridge which is great too and of course the other one which always looks fantastic is in fact the martini glass which I just love this one's a good one if you don't want to give each person too much because the martini glass although it looks quite large actually doesn't hold very much at all and that's a nice one to work with as well so you've got a lot of options there for however you'd like to serve up your trifle but let's start by actually doing one in the large one so the first thing that we need to do is we need to drain our fruit and the fruit will take several hours to thaw you can thaw it at room temperature it's okay but don't throw away all that gorgeous juice because you can use that as a part of the juice to make your jelly width and it'll give it a lot of extra flavor so again instead of using alcohol or just into the water the cold water section actually use the juice from your fruit as part of that component so then top it up with the water or top it up with the alcohol okay the next thing we need to do is we need to chop our jelly now all you have to do with this once you've made your jelly the jelly will take about four hours to set in the fridge it's just take a bread and butter knife and just crisscross it and chop it up and then just go at a different angle so what we really want is just real mush of jellies that lime smell is just fantastic this is going to give us our trifle a little bit of color as well because the other jelly is quite dark red which is the same as our fruit so a little bit of color mixed with the custard that we're going to be using is going to be divine and we'll do the same with our raspberry jelly port-wine is also another fabulous flavor for a trifle okay the next thing to do is to cut up our sponge now I'm just using a plain sponge but as I said you can also use quite easily a sponge roll which is quite lovely with the jam in the center so all we want to do with this is to cut it into manageable pieces so I don't make them more than perhaps just over a centimeter or so in thickness slice them through use a serrated knife to do that otherwise you might find your sponge will break up and then I usually cut it into even smaller ones again so I've got nice easy pieces to work with if you actually want to go to the trouble of making your own sponge you can do that but what I would suggest you do is make that a couple of days earlier so it just hardens up a little bit Styles up a little bit it's a little easier to work with and it won't quite disintegrate as much when you start putting the alcohol on it which is what we're going to be doing in just a moment so I'm going to bring my bowls in now and we'll start the layering process so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to put a layer of our sponge all the way over the bottom and as you can see the smaller the pieces are it's a lot easier to pack them in so that they really do create a complete layer on the bottom you can squash them a little bit that won't hurt because we are going to put some alcohol on the top and we're going to layer with a whole host of other ingredients now you can do one of two things with your alcohol you can just drizzle if you're very comfortable with that if you're not I would suggest that you take a spoon and you just drizzle it over the top like this now this is concentrated so I'm using straight masala here so just be careful how much you put of this in one it will make your cake soggy and if you have it too soggy it it will completely disintegrate so just give it a little bit of a drizzle if you're not comfortable doing that I would suggest that you then just use a pastry brush that's another option and you can just dab it on and do it as little or as much as you like so the choice is yours next we want to add now the order that you do these really does not matter it is totally up to you if you want to have a cake on the bottom and then you want jelly and then you want fruit or you want to have custard underneath go your harness whichever you want to do but I'm just going to lay them all up in different ways so we're going to just put a little bit of our jelly over the top and I'm going to do both of my jellies at the same time spread it out a little bit of our green jelly you'll also find that the jelly will cause a little bit of a barrier and help not have all of the flavors completely mingled with each other so I do like to use jelly as my second layer I'm then going to add a little bit of my custard so we're going to just pour that over the top and also if you don't want to make your own custard fire from the supermarket some of the custards they make nowadays are really quite delicious so that's fine and then we want a layer of our fruit and again just mix that out spread that out rather and then we want a layer of cream now I've already whipped the cream and you'll need to do that otherwise it will just pour right through and be very difficult and messy when you go to get it out now how thick you with that is purely up to you so that's our first layer are we going to repeat that process now and we're going to lay up more cake and you can do this as many layers as you like depending on the size of your bowl and what I'm going to do is I'm going to finish off with some dark chocolate and I'm going to use my micro plane and I'm going to grate chocolate over the top this is just some linked chocolate you can use any chocolate you like but it finishes the trifle off just beautifully and that's all there is to it and there you have your trifle so there you go how easy was that and of course you don't have to make all of those ingredients if you don't want to you can buy them already pre-made from your supermarket and just layer them up a great dessert to have it any time of the year and particularly nice at Christmastime for those of you who want something a little lighter a little easier and a little quicker to put together and perhaps something that's not going to be quite so filling at the end of the meal as a traditional Christmas pudding might be I hope you enjoy your Christmas I hope you have a go at trifle if you don't do it for this time of the year at Christmas time then certainly try it for the rest of the year as well it is a delicious dessert and I hope you come back to the website to have a look at all the other videos and the other recipes and to see how to make all of the other elements of the dish as well black book cooking calm and of course you can connect with us on Twitter and Facebook I'll see you soon