In the Brown Kitchen: Strawberry and Raspberry Trifle

I've always enjoyed cooking but for the first few years we lived together our kitchen was so small it diminished my enthusiasm a little. When we moved to Barnsley and my kitchen was suddenly dramatically bigger - not huge, but you could put a pan down without losing half your counter space - I found my cooking enthusiasm renewed. I'm not the world's best cook and I'm certainly not the tidiest or best at presentation, but I enjoy it. With a personal benchmark of 'Dave ate it and he did not die', I'm never going to be a Masterchef but I can at least share my culinary fun along the way!

Strawberry and Raspberry Trifle

This recipe was actually for ginger and strawberry trifle, courtesy of Eat In magazine. However, as I was worried the taste of ginger biscuits might overwhelm the rest of the ingredients, I opted for using Lotus Biscoff Caramelised Biscuits instead. This was (mostly) a good choice. More on that in a minute. To compensate for losing the ginger, I added in an extra flavour by using raspberries too.

It was my first attempt at making custard and it went pretty well. No lumps or icky skin. The recipe called for layering banana, custard, strawberry and biscuits. My final layering was banana, custard, biscuit, strawberry and raspberry, custard, strawberry and raspberry. Mr B topped his off with some single cream.

What went wrong?

Shortly after dividing out the custard, fruit, biscuits etc and making up the trifles, we ate a mini one each. Delicious. The flaw in the plan was that the mini trifles we ate later on had had time to sit and the crunchy biscuit had become a soggy mess. Urgh.

What would I do differently next time?

I'll be keeping everything separate until serving time next time. Soggy biscuits are unforgivable!

End result?

I often avoid trifle because I don't like the texture of soggy sponge. This wasn't a traditional approach to trifle but the combination of raspberries, strawberries, biscuits and custard was very enjoyable.

Success or failure?

I'm calling this a win. As long as there aren't any more soggy biscuits...

Mrs B put a lot of pressure on herself with this one. First time making home made custard with the added stress of making sure it wasn't lumpy and definitely bereft of skin. We have high expectations but excellent taste when it comes to custard. Final verdict? The whole thing - custard, strawberries, raspberries, biscuits and that delicious cream topping - tasted ten times better than the last trifle I had which was from the supermarket. My only complaint is that two servings of the trifle simply weren't enough.