Heavenly Cake Bakers: Chocolate Raspberry Trifle Goes to the Park

This weekend was a banner weekend. I had not one, but two days off. It was heaven.

On Sunday, I puttered about all day, spoke to no one, and made two cakes. One was a wedding cake prototype for Jessica and Christopher. More on this later. The other was this trifle. I made half the recipe, and tucked it into a convenient vase for transport.

I made a few changes in the various components, based on the contents of the refrigerator. The final product was composed of Moist Chocolate Genoise, apricot preserves, creme anglaise made with cream, milk, coconut milk and the dregs of the milk chocolate ganache syrup left over from the wedding cake prototyping (it was in the glass measuring cup I used, hence the brownish flavor), and raspberries. I was going to make the raspberry whipped cream topping, but ran out of room in the container.

After I made the trifle, I felt ambivalent about taking it to a picnic in the park on a hot day, and put a daisy cake (visible behind) into the oven. However, when I emailed my concern to Stacey, her response was, and I quote, "Are you f*ING kidding me? I have been dreaming about trifle all day and night. Put it in a tub, I am bringing my spoon!!!!!" I brought the trifle. Avi took pictures of it with his new camera. All went well.

In the end, it was good that we had two cakes, because all of the lunch that we brought along was disgustingly healthy, including this salad from Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Every Day that has been obsessing me, quinoa cakes, egg salad, and roasted asparagus. On the way to the park, I realized how lame it was that we didn't even have a single bag of potato chips or something. Next time, barbeque sauce.

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Saint-Honoré Trifle

It may sound French and look British, but this one here is unmistakeably an All-American Trifle. When the stern face of Honest Abe looks out over your creamy concoctions, you know that you've baked something socially significant, a dessert with integrity. A truly trustworthy trifle.

                       

Three shows, one bake sale, two final projects, and five visiting family members pushed this Heavenly Cake back a little, and simplified its scope. Would you believe that that creamy, fluffy, fruity parfait was actually supposed to have two MORE elements--a whipped cream topping and a spun sugar hat. Having whipped quite enough cream into the interior Chiboust pastry cream (delicious. amazing.), I left off the whipped topper, and decided to leave spun sugar for another, less humid day in Brooklyn. Having sustained a few nasty burns at the bakery this weekend, I wasn't overeager to punch up my caramel blister cred. And don't worry, Heavenly Bakers, I'm sure I'll get around to it soon.

I quartered the recipe, which was meant to make one huge bowl-sized trifle, and wound up using even less than the recommended amount of cake since a lazy sifting cake process left me with cornstarch lumps on the bottom of the six-inch pan. I just cut the bottom off, and had plenty to work with. Trifles just seem to beg for ingredient substitutions, and this one had plenty. Instead of orange marmalade, I used apricot preserves to spread the bottom of the cake layers, which were moistened by cherry juice and Campari (which is the current medium for my homemade vanilla jar). Instead of the recommended strawberries, I used David Lebovitz's candied cherries, which I recently made from a jar of cherries in syrup, and which I've lost my heart to entirely.

The Chiboust cream, a gelatin-supported pastry cream, was flavored with abundant vanilla seeds from the Ugandan vanilla beans (take that, Tahiti and Madagascar) that Liana smuggled home for me. Unlike the dried-out haul that I lugged back last January, these beans are fat, wet, and lush. I can't wait to put them in absolutely everything.

The trifle was finished so late last night that it wasn't even tasted, as Matt had already had his ice cream, and Liana 'doesn't like sponge cake,' (who raised her?). I think it will be better anyway with some blending time. Every component was of course tasted along the way, and was perfect. Now all I need to do is emulate my mother and get myself an extensive collection of sundae and parfait glasses, and I'll be all set.