An Australian Christmas – Trifle

Most of you readers come from the Northern Hemisphere so for you Christmas is all about cold mornings, large hot lunches, and possibly snow. In Australia, it’s about sun, the beach, and often inappropriate large hot lunches. This is a bit of a series about Christmas in Australia.

Trifle is a true delight of a desert and totally traditional at Christmas, at least here. I know we do it here in Australia, and I suspect also in New Zealand, but I don’t know if it appears anywhere else. Conveniently enough, it’s also super easy, though of course you can make it complicated like any desert.

Ingredients

• 1 packet of miniature Swiss jam rolls
• 2 packets of complimentary of jelly
• 2 different sorts of fruit
• Thick custard
• Fresh cream, whipped
• Alcohol (probably some sort of spirit or fortified wine, please don’t use beer)

Method

Make up the two sorts of jelly. If you’re using tinned fruit, use some of the liquid from the tin in one of the jellies. For example, I like port wine jelly and raspberry. If I’m using tinned cherries or raspberries, I use the juice from the tin to part make up the jelly.

Make the custard. You want quite firm custard, at least the same consistency as the jelly. If you don’t have time, thick bought custard is fine.

Whip the cream till soft peaks form and refrigerate.

Once the jelly is set and the custard cool, slice the miniature Swiss rolls in to 1cm slices and place a layer in the bottom of a decorative glass bowl. Pour some of the alcohol into a jug and moderately douse the cake layer. In this particular version I’d use port. Then cover the cake with a layer of custard, then a layer of one of the jellies, then one of the fruits. Repeat the layering again, this time using the other jelly and fruit. Go all the way to the top, leaving a few centimetres gap. Fill the gap with the whipped cream and top with fruit.

Put it in the fridge for at least a few hours, overnight is better, to allow the flavours to develop. To serve, just scoop out into a bowl.

Variations

My favourite variation is with port wine and raspberry jelly, with cherries and raspberries, and port as the lubricant. The traditional Australian combination is red and green jelly, pineapple and kiwifruit, and rum as the flavour (bleh). Other lovely versions were lime and pineapple jelly, pineapple, passionfruit and kiwifruit, some coconut milk in the custard, and white rum as the liqueur. Feel free to be inventive!

The other variation is to assemble individual trifles rather than one big one. Not a bad idea, because after a few scoopfuls come out, it’s not what I’d call the most attractive dish.

Oh, and by the way, leftover trifle for breakfast is also an Australian tradition, hmmmm.