Strawberry trifle is a wonderful, make-ahead dessert for summer months when strawberries are in season and plentiful. We use up 1 kilo or 2.2lbs of fresh strawberries layering it with sponge cake, custard and cream with grated white chocolate on top!
Every spring I go a bit crazy when I see strawberries on sale. I think I just get tired of winter fruit like pears and mandarins and it's so exciting when strawbs come out and they sell for $1.50 a punnet. I've been known to buy 6 punnets!
Tips For Making Strawberry Trifle
1 This strawberry trifle dessert recipe uses up a kilo or 2.2lbs of strawberries so save this for when strawberries are cheap and plentiful!
2 This can be made easily by using a bought sponge cake, strawberry sauce and custard if you're really pressed for time and you can just use this as a visual guide but here I will show you how to make it if you want to make everything from scratch.
3 The Thermomix can be a real help with this recipe as it can make the sauce, custard and whip the cream. It can also make the hot milk sponge cake too!
4 The ingredients in a trifle need to be kept cold so you can make the strawberry sauce and custard a day or a few ahead of time.
5 Trifles are best made ahead of time to give the sponge cake time to soften up. Make this dessert a day or two ahead of time and just add the final flourish of whipped cream and strawberries on the day of serving.
6 I use a vegetable peeler to grate the chocolate on top.
I love strawberry and berry season because we didn't have a lot of berries growing up. When I was small, we had a small strawberry bush in our garden but the strawberries weren't sweet. I suspect that in our excitement at seeing the hint of red on them, picked them way too early. I was chatting to Monica and neither of us were really allowed a lot of processed food as children but we had to find our "junk" where we could. And that meant that you could often find us both guzzling condensed milk from a tube as kids with the fridge door open and ready to slam it shut if we got caught.
She told me that she also used to eat Flintstones gummies just for the flavour. I told her that we weren't allowed anything but water so when I tried a raspberry cough syrup it was so good and full of faux raspberry flavour I drank it for the flavour. I felt really sick afterwards but I suspect that if you'd asked a 6 year old me if it was worth it I would have said a resolute YES!
On the rare occasion that got potato chips, we would get 4-5 individual chips and that's why to this day I eat chips ridge by ridge. Still it isn't as bad as my nephews who were given a total of 1 m&m a day if they were good. I swear that's why I love adding ingredients and being generous with ingredients. I think that's how I ended up using 1 kilo of strawberries in this trifle!
So tell me Dear Reader, were you allowed processed foods when you were growing up? Did you ever eat condensed milk out of a tube?
Strawberry Trifle
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460g/1lb sponge or madeira cake (I recommend my hot milk sponge cake or use bought)
500g/1.1lbs strawberries, hulled and roughly chopped
250g/8.8ozs caster or superfine sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
For Creme Diplomat
2 cups/500ml/1pint milk
130g/4.6ozs caster or superfine sugar
30g/1ozs cornflour/fine cornstarch
4 egg yolks, room temperature
1 egg, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
Pinch salt
250ml/8.8ozs pure or thickened cream, very cold
For assembling
250ml/8.8ozs pure or thickened cream, very cold
2 tablespoons icing sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
250g/8.8ozs fresh strawberries, hulled and halved
50g/1.7ozs white chocolate for shaving
Step 1 - First make the strawberry sauce and the custard. You can do this up to 3 days ahead of time and store it in the fridge. Place the strawberries up in a medium saucepan with the sugar. Bring to a simmer for 5-8 minutes until the sugar has dissolved and the strawberries have softened. Set aside to cool and puree with a stick blender. Store in the fridge once cool.
Step 2 - Heat the milk in a medium heavy bottomed saucepan. In a large jug whisk the egg yolks, egg, sugar, cornflour, vanilla and salt together until pale and fluffy. When the milk is almost bubbling at the edges, take it off the heat. Ladle one scoop of the hot milk into the egg mixture and whisk it in to temper the eggs. Then pour this egg mixture into the saucepan into the milk and whisk to combine. Switch to a flat bottomed spatula and place on low heat and allow to thicken gradually stirring occasionally to prevent it from catching on the bottom. Thermomix directions: place all ingredients in a TM bowl and set to 7 mins, 90C/ speed #4. Place in a bowl, cover the actual surface with cling film and allow to cool on the bench to room temperature. Place the creme diplomat in the fridge until needed.
Step 3 - Place the bowl and whisk into the freezer for 5 minutes just to make sure that they are very cold. Whisk the first cup of whipped cream until you get soft peaks and fold it into the chilled custard to create creme diplomat. Thermomix directions: place the TM bowl and butterfly whisk in the freezer for 5 minutes. Place the cream in the bowl and set to speed #4 and remove the MC and watch it until it becomes whipped and thick. Fold this whipped cream into the chilled custard to make creme diplomat. Place in the fridge until needed.
Step 4 - Now comes the fun part-assembling! Cut the sponge cake into 4x7cm/1.6x2.7inch rectangles and place on the base of the trifle bowl leaning against each other on an angle (you will have some cake leftover). Scoop the strawberry sauce on top of the cake, using around half of the sauce. Spread half of the creme diplomat on top of this. Grate some white chocolate on top of the creme.
Step 5 - Then place the halved strawberries around the glass cut side facing outwards. Place the remaining cake in the centre and add a ladleful of the strawberry sauce on top of this and grate some more white chocolate. Add the remaining creme diplomat on top. Then pour over the remaining strawberry sauce. At this point you can hit pause and cover and store this for up to 2 days in the fridge.
Step 6 - On the day of serving, whip the cream with the sugar and vanilla until you get soft peaks. Thermomix directions: place the TM bowl and butterfly whisk in the freezer for 5 minutes. Place the cream in the bowl and set to speed #4 and remove the MC and watch it until it becomes whipped and thick. Dollop this on top of the trifle and add the remaining strawberries (quartered or halved). Grate some white chocolate on top and serve.
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