Cool Blog - Friends Who Cook - Shameless Self Promotion

Being such a cool girl, I go to playgroup on Tuesdays. We have an unusual playgroup in that we don't actually play with our children very much - we just allow our cherubs to play and be a bit free range in a safe environment. One thing we do do well, is morning tea. Cakes, slices, biscuits, dips and ooohhhhh.... lots of yummy goodies.

A very crafty friend, a Crafty Mummy in fact, and I put our clever little heads together and came up with the idea of putting together a blog where we can put recipes of the things that the other tricky mummy's have made us for Playgroup.  Having just had a wee boy, I have been quite slack in getting things up and ready for the blog.  The other day I actually put my first post up - Trifles in Tea cups.

Check it out here.....  Friends Who Cook (or scroll down)

When we started 'The Closed Bookclub', we decided that two people would bring a dessert to our meetings inspired by the book we have read for the month.  In February, we read 'Persuasion' by Jane Austen. I was on dessert. I Googled 'Jane Austen cooking' and found that desserts in the Regency Period were all about showing off. Jelly was being used a lot as well as cakes and creams and fruits. Appearance was everything. I came up with the idea of making trifles and I decided to make individual ones in tea-cups. It was very cute and everyone was very impressed.

Prep time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: This depends on how long the jelly layers take to set
Serves: 8 individual trifles


Ingredients:
12 Savoiardi Biscuits (Lady fingers)
1packet of raspberry jelly
200 grams of frozen raspberries
300mls of thickened cream
2 tsp vanilla sugar
1 tub of Marscapone cheese
1/4 cup of store bought custard


To finish:
300mls of thickened cream
1 tsp Vanilla Sugar
3 tbs prepared custard
50 grams of white chocolate, grated or cut into shards


Method:

1. Make jelly according to packet instructions, allow to cool slightly
2. Cut savoiardi biscuits into thirds (or however small you need them to be to fit neatly in the bottom of the cups). Soak them in jelly and pop into the bottom of the tea cups, pour in enough jelly to cover the biscuits. Pop 2-3 raspberries into each tea-cup. Put the cups into the fridge to set (this should take less than 30 mins).
3. To make the custard filling, whip the cream and vanilla sugar until quite firm. Whip in the marscapone cheese in 2-3 lots.  Add 1/2 the custard and mix through - don't beat this for too long or it will get too runny again.
4. When the bottom layer of jelly is set, spoon the custard mixture into the tea-cups, smooth over the tops. 
5. Add 2-3 raspberries and press into the custard mixture. Soak more biscuits in the jelly and press down.  Pour the remaining jelly on top and put into the fridge.  The trifles are essentially finished. At this point I cling-wrapped them and was able to transport them to my friend's house and just put the remaining topping and chocolate on top at the last minute.
6. To make the topping, whip the cream and the sugar until quite firm. Beat in the custard, remembering not to whip for too long.
7. Spoon the mixture on top of the trifles until it is nice and high above the rim, sprinkle with shards of shaved white chocolate. Enjoy!

Variations:
- use other berries like strawberries or blueberries
- use lemon jelly instead
- try adding different fruits like mango and passionfruit
- try putting them in glasses so that you can see the delicious layers
- For a picnic one day, I am going to make these trifles in clear plastic cups, but as I build the layers up I am going to set a plastic spoon into the side of the cup, I might even try pressing a raspberry between the cup and the spoon - how cool would that look!


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