Platinum Jubilee Trifle
5 June 2022 12:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeThere aren't any Platinum Jubilee events going on locally that I know of (the council has put some purple crown-shaped signs on the lamp-posts), so since cooking is my hobby I decided to stage my own celebrations by making the official Platinum Jubilee Trifle. https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/lemon_swiss_roll_and_42467
Scaled down somewhat, which caused its own set of problems!
I wasn't originally intending to make my own amaretti biscuits, but I couldn't find any shops that stocked them locally, with the exception of (unsurprisingly) Waitrose, where they were listed on the shelf edge but (perhaps unsurprisingly) out of stock. So I decided that if I used two egg whites to make the amaretti I could then use the two yolks to make the lemon curd.
I think the biscuits were supposed to rise and spread more than that! I don't have a very good record of making things with whipped egg white folded into them, and I'd used a teaspoon of almond essence instead of a tablespoon of almond liqueur -- with hindsight I should probably have put an extra tablespoon of liquid in to compensate, but I didn't know how runny the mixture ought to have been.
The next day I made the Swiss roll, with some trepidation. The one and only time I had tried this previously (using the same tin), it was a bit of a disaster. This time, it almost worked perfectly :-)
It did crack a bit -- strategically concealed on the underside of the photo -- but I reckoned this would be undetectable once the roll was sliced up and arranged in the trifle. It would probably have rolled perfectly if I'd realised what was important -- rolling it up while still steaming-hot from the tin -- and what was less vital (wasting time in cutting the prescribed slot an inch from the end of the flat sponge to make it roll better).
I was a bit sceptical about the recipe instructions to roll up the sponge layer first, allow it to cool, and then to attempt to unroll it in order to spread it with lemon curd -- I had visions of its cracking horribly if I attempted to unroll it once it had 'set'. But this was definitely the right way to do it, since if I'd spent additional time at the start carefully spreading lemon curd across the flat surface I don't think I would have succeeded in rolling it up safely at all. And to my surprise, it was in fact possible to open out the cooled roll cautiously and insert the filling after the fact... although I had in fact added a teaspoon of glycerine which was not in the BBC recipe, as per the instructions in "Good Food on a Budget"! (I was following the Swiss roll recipe there for a 'cooked' fatless sponge -- you beat the egg and sugar together over a bowl of hot water until they thicken -- rather than the one given on the Web page requiring an electric whisk, and the glycerine suggestion seemed like a good idea.)
It was at this stage that I discovered the lemon curd had set quite hard in the fridge, which I don't think has ever happened to me before. I think the proportion of butter must have been too high, or else I had cooked it too long in my attempts to get it to thicken. I had to warm it with extra water before I could even get it out of the jar, and trying to spread it over the sponge in a hurry and without chilling the latter in the process would definitely have been an absolute non-starter :-p
("Good Food on a Budget" tells you to warm the jam before doing the spreading and rolling in a single operation, which presumably helps to keep the sponge layer warm and moist and hence more malleable.)
On the next dayof Christmas I made the St Clement's jelly ('oranges and lemons' say the bells of St Clements...), which would need several hours to set even after it had cooled and therefore needed to be done in advance of the custard. Fortunately I had some sheets of gelatine, so that was one thing I didn't have to buy. (The total cost of the ingredients was about fifteen pounds, including the farmer's market double cream -- which was not in fact the most expensive ingredient, that being the ground almonds for the amaretti!)
I'm not sure how their juice quantities were supposed to work; the juice from one navel orange alone was about 150ml, and they were telling you to juice 4 lemons and 3 oranges... In the end, since I had one sheet of gelatine left over and knew that the jelly would tend to get absorbed by the trifle sponges (or Swiss roll slices), I decided to add the juice of one lemon in addition to my single orange and use the extra sheet of gelatine, hoping desperately that the resulting concoction would in fact set. It did set overnight -- beautifully.
I had put the Swiss roll into the fridge after filling it in order to keep the lemon curd cool, and had some difficulty slicing it in order to arrange the swirls of cake around the sides of the trifle dish as directed, since the filling had now gone rock hard again :-p It was a bit of a waste of effort in practice, as the sides of my trifle bowl were too concave and the slices didn't lie flat up against them so that the swirl effect wasn't visible from outside-- one might as well have used plain trifle sponges, spread with lemon curd if so desired...
On the next day, once the jelly layer had set, I made the lemon custard. In this case I largely ignored the BBC recipe, and used evaporated milk with lemon peel infused in it instead of double cream with artificial lemon essence (I was saving my cream for the actual whipped layer), and a single whole egg instead of multiple egg yolks, since including the white is supposed to make a less creamy but firmer consistency 'suitable for moulds which are to be turned out', and it had to be hard enough to stop the amaretti biscuits sinking in -- and I didn't want to have multiple partial eggs left over! I thought one whole egg ought to be more than equivalent to half of "three egg yolks", but the custard didn't seem very keen to thicken, and I was terrified of splitting it by heating too hard. Also, the finished article tasted quite strongly of evaporated milk and scarcely at all of lemon :-(
My worst fears were confirmed the next morning when it turned out the centre of the custard *still* hadn't set properly... After some agonising that night, by which point it was clear the custard was never going to set, I boiled up some lemon juice with some more cornflour, spooned out as much of the semi-liquid custard from the middle of the trifle as I could (luckily the jelly layer proved to be very firmly set underneath!), and mixed in the thick lemon paste in the hopes that the result would set better. I also hoped that it would fill the bowl a bit better, but it didn't make all that much difference in volume :-(
On the following day, by which point I had more or less completely lost track of time, I melted up my white chocolate, sprinkled it with an ounce of mixed peel, or as much as I could fit on (a whole ounce seemed to be far too much, and I can't believe that the accurate ⅞oz would have been very different!), and found sufficient flat space for it in the fridge to set, with difficulty. It was a hot day, and the chocolate bar had been pretty soft before I even started to melt it, so if it was to be broken up into sharp 'shards' it would definitely need to be refrigerated.
I had been unable to obtain any arrowroot (which as it turned out was a pity, since it would have been handy for emergency thickening of the custard), and so I made my mandarin coulis using plain ordinary cornflour, and boiled it.
I wasn't sure how firm this was going to set, but the only thing to go on top of it was whipped cream, so it ought not to matter. Once it had cooled enough not to melt the custard (which had a distinct separate circle in the centre, but which was now solid), I arranged my amaretti on top of the custard and spooned the coulis gingerly on top; there was just about enough to cover the biscuits. Unfortunately since the bowl was not straight-sided each layer was getting spread out thinner than the last :-(
On Friday morning I finally whipped my very thick double cream with a quarter-pint of milk, both to thin it and to make it go further. It was so solid that otherwise I felt it was more likely to turn into butter than to form a light and airy topping! I also added a tablespoon of icing sugar, which wasn't in the recipe but generally makes trifle toppings nicer. I then added the decoration, splitting up my white chocolate into the requisite long triangular shards (it still wasn't all that firm!) and almost forgetting to sprinkle over the extra amaretti biscuits. It proved to be quite impossible to 'crumble' my home-made biscuits since they were baked very hard indeed, and I resorted to hitting them with the meat-mallet :-p
But I was very pleased with the result. You couldn't see the swirly Swiss roll slices, but the whole effect was very festive, and it actually did look reminiscent of a crown :-)
Also, it turned out to taste delicious. It was probably just as well that the amaretti were baked so hard, since it meant they retained their crispness even after being soaked overnight in mandarin coulis (they are still slightly textured even now, several days later). The custard with additional lemon juice tasted wonderfully lemony and not like evaporated milk at all. The St Clement's jelly was subtly both lemon and orange flavoured. The jelly-infused Swiss roll was very good (and the lemon curd had finally softened!) And the white chocolate made an unexpectedly excellent combination with all the other flavours.
A great success, even though I shall undoubtedly never make it again, given that it takes about a week to prepare -- and neither, I suspect, will anyone else :-P
But it was actually worth the effort, which vastly elaborate recipes almost never are.
Scaled down somewhat, which caused its own set of problems!
I wasn't originally intending to make my own amaretti biscuits, but I couldn't find any shops that stocked them locally, with the exception of (unsurprisingly) Waitrose, where they were listed on the shelf edge but (perhaps unsurprisingly) out of stock. So I decided that if I used two egg whites to make the amaretti I could then use the two yolks to make the lemon curd.
I think the biscuits were supposed to rise and spread more than that! I don't have a very good record of making things with whipped egg white folded into them, and I'd used a teaspoon of almond essence instead of a tablespoon of almond liqueur -- with hindsight I should probably have put an extra tablespoon of liquid in to compensate, but I didn't know how runny the mixture ought to have been.
The next day I made the Swiss roll, with some trepidation. The one and only time I had tried this previously (using the same tin), it was a bit of a disaster. This time, it almost worked perfectly :-)
It did crack a bit -- strategically concealed on the underside of the photo -- but I reckoned this would be undetectable once the roll was sliced up and arranged in the trifle. It would probably have rolled perfectly if I'd realised what was important -- rolling it up while still steaming-hot from the tin -- and what was less vital (wasting time in cutting the prescribed slot an inch from the end of the flat sponge to make it roll better).
I was a bit sceptical about the recipe instructions to roll up the sponge layer first, allow it to cool, and then to attempt to unroll it in order to spread it with lemon curd -- I had visions of its cracking horribly if I attempted to unroll it once it had 'set'. But this was definitely the right way to do it, since if I'd spent additional time at the start carefully spreading lemon curd across the flat surface I don't think I would have succeeded in rolling it up safely at all. And to my surprise, it was in fact possible to open out the cooled roll cautiously and insert the filling after the fact... although I had in fact added a teaspoon of glycerine which was not in the BBC recipe, as per the instructions in "Good Food on a Budget"! (I was following the Swiss roll recipe there for a 'cooked' fatless sponge -- you beat the egg and sugar together over a bowl of hot water until they thicken -- rather than the one given on the Web page requiring an electric whisk, and the glycerine suggestion seemed like a good idea.)
It was at this stage that I discovered the lemon curd had set quite hard in the fridge, which I don't think has ever happened to me before. I think the proportion of butter must have been too high, or else I had cooked it too long in my attempts to get it to thicken. I had to warm it with extra water before I could even get it out of the jar, and trying to spread it over the sponge in a hurry and without chilling the latter in the process would definitely have been an absolute non-starter :-p
("Good Food on a Budget" tells you to warm the jam before doing the spreading and rolling in a single operation, which presumably helps to keep the sponge layer warm and moist and hence more malleable.)
On the next day
I'm not sure how their juice quantities were supposed to work; the juice from one navel orange alone was about 150ml, and they were telling you to juice 4 lemons and 3 oranges... In the end, since I had one sheet of gelatine left over and knew that the jelly would tend to get absorbed by the trifle sponges (or Swiss roll slices), I decided to add the juice of one lemon in addition to my single orange and use the extra sheet of gelatine, hoping desperately that the resulting concoction would in fact set. It did set overnight -- beautifully.
I had put the Swiss roll into the fridge after filling it in order to keep the lemon curd cool, and had some difficulty slicing it in order to arrange the swirls of cake around the sides of the trifle dish as directed, since the filling had now gone rock hard again :-p It was a bit of a waste of effort in practice, as the sides of my trifle bowl were too concave and the slices didn't lie flat up against them so that the swirl effect wasn't visible from outside-- one might as well have used plain trifle sponges, spread with lemon curd if so desired...
On the next day, once the jelly layer had set, I made the lemon custard. In this case I largely ignored the BBC recipe, and used evaporated milk with lemon peel infused in it instead of double cream with artificial lemon essence (I was saving my cream for the actual whipped layer), and a single whole egg instead of multiple egg yolks, since including the white is supposed to make a less creamy but firmer consistency 'suitable for moulds which are to be turned out', and it had to be hard enough to stop the amaretti biscuits sinking in -- and I didn't want to have multiple partial eggs left over! I thought one whole egg ought to be more than equivalent to half of "three egg yolks", but the custard didn't seem very keen to thicken, and I was terrified of splitting it by heating too hard. Also, the finished article tasted quite strongly of evaporated milk and scarcely at all of lemon :-(
My worst fears were confirmed the next morning when it turned out the centre of the custard *still* hadn't set properly... After some agonising that night, by which point it was clear the custard was never going to set, I boiled up some lemon juice with some more cornflour, spooned out as much of the semi-liquid custard from the middle of the trifle as I could (luckily the jelly layer proved to be very firmly set underneath!), and mixed in the thick lemon paste in the hopes that the result would set better. I also hoped that it would fill the bowl a bit better, but it didn't make all that much difference in volume :-(
On the following day, by which point I had more or less completely lost track of time, I melted up my white chocolate, sprinkled it with an ounce of mixed peel, or as much as I could fit on (a whole ounce seemed to be far too much, and I can't believe that the accurate ⅞oz would have been very different!), and found sufficient flat space for it in the fridge to set, with difficulty. It was a hot day, and the chocolate bar had been pretty soft before I even started to melt it, so if it was to be broken up into sharp 'shards' it would definitely need to be refrigerated.
I had been unable to obtain any arrowroot (which as it turned out was a pity, since it would have been handy for emergency thickening of the custard), and so I made my mandarin coulis using plain ordinary cornflour, and boiled it.
I wasn't sure how firm this was going to set, but the only thing to go on top of it was whipped cream, so it ought not to matter. Once it had cooled enough not to melt the custard (which had a distinct separate circle in the centre, but which was now solid), I arranged my amaretti on top of the custard and spooned the coulis gingerly on top; there was just about enough to cover the biscuits. Unfortunately since the bowl was not straight-sided each layer was getting spread out thinner than the last :-(
On Friday morning I finally whipped my very thick double cream with a quarter-pint of milk, both to thin it and to make it go further. It was so solid that otherwise I felt it was more likely to turn into butter than to form a light and airy topping! I also added a tablespoon of icing sugar, which wasn't in the recipe but generally makes trifle toppings nicer. I then added the decoration, splitting up my white chocolate into the requisite long triangular shards (it still wasn't all that firm!) and almost forgetting to sprinkle over the extra amaretti biscuits. It proved to be quite impossible to 'crumble' my home-made biscuits since they were baked very hard indeed, and I resorted to hitting them with the meat-mallet :-p
But I was very pleased with the result. You couldn't see the swirly Swiss roll slices, but the whole effect was very festive, and it actually did look reminiscent of a crown :-)
Also, it turned out to taste delicious. It was probably just as well that the amaretti were baked so hard, since it meant they retained their crispness even after being soaked overnight in mandarin coulis (they are still slightly textured even now, several days later). The custard with additional lemon juice tasted wonderfully lemony and not like evaporated milk at all. The St Clement's jelly was subtly both lemon and orange flavoured. The jelly-infused Swiss roll was very good (and the lemon curd had finally softened!) And the white chocolate made an unexpectedly excellent combination with all the other flavours.
A great success, even though I shall undoubtedly never make it again, given that it takes about a week to prepare -- and neither, I suspect, will anyone else :-P
But it was actually worth the effort, which vastly elaborate recipes almost never are.
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