Festive English Trifle

This is one dessert that is easy to make. The beauty of this is in the "construction", that is when you start putting all the ingredients together to make a beautiful, luscious looking and inviting dessert any which way you look at it.

Before venturing into doing this lovely dessert, you may want to purchase a trifle dish from Metro Gaisano at the Market Market in Global City. If the sale is still on you'll get two for the price of one. I hope to get a nice photo of this when I make one for my friend Heidi's birthday on 19th.

However, if you wish to see how this divine dessert looks like you may want to get a copy of the November issue of Appetite Magazine, check out the Easy Does It pages and you can almost taste this just by looking. I suggest you use different colors of cake rolls so that it will be colorful.

However if you're a chocolate lover, you can also opt to use a chocolate roll, include a mocha roll or a choco-strawberry roll for that added color instead of using just the chocolate brown colored roll. Put choco-vanilla wafers on top, place other nuts like walnuts, cashew nuts, or whatever takes your fancy. Play around with colors and flavors when making this dessert. Be creative. You can also use kiwi fruits, grapes and mandarin oranges for fruits for the added flavor and color. As a bonus to this recipe I will throw in a simple caramel recipe which my sons enjoy eating like candy.

FESTIVE ENGLISH TRIFLE

Ingredients:

1 ube flavored/ purple colored cake roll brushed with liqueur of choice

1 mocha flavored cake roll brushed with liqueur of choice

1 pandan flavored cake roll brushed with liqueur of choice

6 cups caramel pudding

2 cups fresh strawberries, stemmed, sliced and dipped in peach syrup

1 can peaches, thinly sliced

Pecan nuts for topping

1 cherry with stem for topping

2-3 cups whipped heavy cream

Procedure:

• To assemble put slices of the ube flavored cake roll to cover the bottom of the trifle dish. Put sliced strawberries and sliced peaches on the side of the trifle dish. Moisten these from the syrup of the canned peaches so they will remain attached to the sides.
  
  Also put peach slices, strawberries and kiwi on top of the ube cake and cover with the caramel pudding. Next pour some heavy cream and then put the mocha cake roll, again the fruits on top and on the side of the dish, cover with the caramel pudding and then the heavy whipped cream.
  
  Repeat the same with the pandan cake roll, and then the fruits, the caramel pudding and cover top with the whipped heavy cream. Top with strawberries, peaches and pecan nuts and a cherry. Cover with a plastic wrap. Serve chilled.

Here now is the caramel recipe which I mentioned earlier. You can add a tablespoon of chocolate powder to this to turn this into choco-caramel

CARAMEL

Ingredients:

4-6 cans of condensed milk, remove label but do not open

enough water to cover

Procedure:

In a large pressure cooker, place the unopened cans of condensed milk, put enough water to cover.

Pressure cook these for 20 minutes to make a soft easy to spoon and spread caramel.

However, if you want the caramel to be thicker, pressure cook for 25 minutes. If you want the caramel to be almost brown, and much thicker, cook for 30 minutes

This caramel recipe can be used as an icing on a chocolate cake or spread in between two layers of cakes use chocolate icing to make a heavenly chocolate caramel cake.