Birthday Trifle!

I recently celebrated my 23rd birthday, although ringing in the year of the Dragon the next day would make it my 24th birthday in Chinese. What better way than to spend it with friends, eating delicious food? We went to the Smith, and unfortunately I completely forgot to take pictures ... yes that happens quite often.

But I digress because this post is really about birthday cake, or to be more accurate, birthday trifle! To read more about the process by which we reached the birthday trifle, check out my birthday post on my joint blog with my friends.

Now what is a trifle? A trifle is quite simply put, a whipped cream layer cake assembled in a bowl. It doesn't require nearly as much effort to assemble a trifle as it does to assemble and decorate a layer cake.



This is the first trifle that I made, which inspired my birthday trifle. This trifle came into existence the way that a good deal of my recipes do, I needed to throw things together so as not to waste food in my fridge. I had Meyer lemons that needed to be used, lemon curd that was reaching it's expiration date, and leftover cupcakes that no one was going to eat. So I decided it was time to turn lemons into lemon curd (instead of lemonade ;) ), after all that was what I had purchased them for. I wanted to use honey instead of all the sugar I kept seeing in the recipes, so I came across this recipe courtesy of The Nourishing Gourmet.

Meyer Lemon Curd
Makes 1 1/2 to 2 cups

3 eggs
1 tablespoon lemon zest (from 2 meyer lemons)
1/4-1/3 cup of honey
1/2 cup freshly squeezed meyer lemon juice
6 tablespoons of butter (evenly cubed)

Instructions:

In a medium stainless steel or enamel saucepan, whisk together the first three ingredients until light in color.

Whisk in the lemon juice, and then add the butter. The reason why you want to cube the butter into even size pieces is because you want the butter to melt evenly.

Continue to whisk slowly over medium heat until all the butter has melted. Cook until the mixture thickens, stirring on occasion, and you start to see a few bubbles popping at the surface.

Remove from heat, and scrape into a fine sieve set over a bowl. Strain the curd, gently stirring through the sieve.

Refrigerate for several hours to thicken.

* Will keep about one week or longer in the refrigerator.

I found that this recipe turned out rather mild in flavor.

The freshly made lemon curd is on the left, and pre-bought lemon curd is on the right. This store bought lemon curd is absolutely delicious. For those of you would like to make the trifle without making your own lemon curd, I purchased mine from Trader Joe's.

Now having made my own lemon curd, I found it to be a little runny. On the other hand, the lemon curd from Trader Joe's had thickened quite a bit (perfect for spreading on toast, a scone, or spooning directly into your mouth). Reaching a perfect consistency merely required me to mix a little of homemade lemon curd with a jar of the Trader Joe's lemon curd. I wanted to thin out the Trader Joe's lemon curd because I wanted the cupcakes to soak in that delicious lemon curd, and I also wanted to use the lemon curd to add a little moisture back into the cupcakes.

Normally you would use a sponge cake in a trifle, but as I said, I used cupcakes instead. The denser texture was lightened by the lemon curd and the whipped cream.

This cupcake was an experiment. I usually make a vanilla cupcake following the Sprinkles recipe for Peppermint-Vanilla Cupcakes, excluding the peppermint extract. I was experimenting with making my own jars of cake mix as Christmas presents. I had already prepared vanilla sugar using real vanilla bean, and vanilla extract. However I had fumbled with the measurements to fill the large jar I was using, and afterwards, I realized that according to the recipe, I had messed up the layers. I put sugar on the bottom, and the flour mixture on top, when I should have done the opposite in accordance to the instructions. So I decided to dump this jar out and see if the measurement conversion would have worked. Unfortunately ... I also forgot to check to see if I had sufficient eggs. Not having sufficient eggs, nor wanting to waste any part of the egg, I decided to separate all the egg whites. I would fold stiff egg whites back into the batter to incorporate more air into them. The result was not a vanilla cupcake, but a cupcake that tasted like a sugar cookie. Perfect for the holiday baking I was doing. Here is my accidental sugar cookie cupcake recipe:

Sugar Cookie Cupcakes

*Makes about 18 cupcakes or two cake rounds

2 cups all-purpose flour , sifted

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. coarse salt

3/4 cup whole milk , room temperature

1 1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1 1/2 stick unsalted butter , room temperature

1 1/2 cup sugar

3 egg yolks , room temperature

3 large egg whites , room temperature

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350°. Line a 12-cup and 6-cup muffin tin with cupcake liners; set aside. * Do not butter or spray the tin. The cupcakes will have difficulty coming out.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt; set aside.

In a wet-measuring cup, mix together milk and extracts; set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter on medium-high speed, until light and fluffy. Gradually add sugar and continue to beat until well combined and fluffy. Reduce the mixer speed to medium and slowly add egg yolks until just blended.

With the mixer on low, slowly add half the flour mixture; add the milk mixture and mix until just blended. Slowly fold in remaining flour mixture, scraping down sides of the bowl with a spatula, as necessary, until just blended.

In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until stiff. First fold in half of the stiff egg whites gently into the batter until blended, and then fold in the second half of the egg whites until incorporated.

Distribute batter evenly between the muffin tins. Bake 22 to 25 minutes.

Wait until cooled to dust powdered sugar over or decorate with colored sugar.

I whipped the cream with a little sugar, and a little lemon curd. And then layer of crumbled cupcake, lemon curd, blueberries, and whipped cream piled atop each other into a medium sized glass bowl. Dede went nuts over the trifle and ate half the bowl in one sitting. All that lemon curd had seeped into the crumbled cupcakes, and it was moist, delicious, and light.

When I found out that buying a cake in NYC apparently costs $60-$80 (Dede thought there would be 18 guests attending the not so surprise birthday party) with an additional $2.50 plating fee at The Smith, I brought up the idea that we could have cake at my place. He had already spent a lot of money in preparation for my birthday (plus Valentine's Day and our anniversary). Cake was not an expense that was particularly important to me, especially since I am currently without a cake store that I love. We had all the ingredients, and he knew how to assemble a trifle (because there was no way I could teach him in such a short amount of time how to assemble and decorate a layer cake). Plus, I had two more jars of Trader Joe's lemon curd that needed to be used!

This is the trifle he made, with strawberries and canned peaches in between the layers instead of blueberries (we used whatever fruit we had in the fridge). Since we were preparing for a large number of guests, we used a large glass bowl instead.

Now the tricky part was decorating a trifle. I used up all the cream layering the trifle, so what could I use to decorate the trifle? I'm not particularly good at piping icing words either. So we created a border with the blackberries, and melted some chocolate to pipe the words.

Piping chocolate was surprisingly easy, and fun. We made scrolls, and swirls, hearts, and even a high heeled shoe.

The candles were gold! (Party City)

And of course, the making of a wish and blowing out of candles ^_^

All in all, this birthday trifle was yummy and cost much less than $80. One day I'm going to start calculating how much each recipe cost me to produce. After all, that's one of the purposes for which I started this blog. The added benefits? I got pictures for my blog, to show off my baking skills, and didn't waste anything in my fridge/pantry.