As a child we used to have gooseberries in the garden and I couldn’t resist taking them from the bushes as they ripened. Here at No 19, my neighbour, Jiřina, has some wonderful gooseberry bushes and this year they are full of fruit and she’s offered me as many as I like!!
Tonight I’m going to a friend’s house for dinner so I thought I could make some dessert using the gooseberries and making use of anything else I have in the house.
As I love gooseberries and I also love trifle, I thought I’d have a go at combining these two fabulous foods!
I’m not quite sure how it’ll turn out, but it’ll be fun to try. Trifle is a dessert that’s basically fruit, sponge, jelly, custard, and whipped cream. People make it is all types of flavours and combinations, and mine is going to be gooseberry.
The Gooseberries: I’ve cleaned, and prepared the gooseberries by removing any stalk or husk and I’ve put them into a pan with the juice of one lemon, about 3 tablespoons of sugar, and I’m cooking them for ten minutes more or less until they break down. Once I’ve got this compote of gooseberry, I’ll let it cool.
The Jelly: There’s usually much more juice than fruit when stewing berries so I’ve separated it out and put the fruit aside leaving the juice in the pan. I’m slowly reheating this with some roses petals (optional) and I’ve added a little gelatine to form a light jelly.
If you’re using rose petals or other flowers make sure they’re edible and clean them throughly before adding them to your food.
The Sponge: At this point you can either buy sponge fingers or, like me and you don’t have any, you can make a light sponge. I’ve made a Swiss Roll sponge which I’ve let cool but either option is good. The recipe for this is in the link below:
Swiss Roll Recipe:
I somehow accidentally added a packet of cinnamon sugar rather than raising agent for the flour. I removed most of it, but there was some left in and this proved to be a fortunate error.
Now the sponge is ready, I’m using a circular bowl and cut the sponge into two circles that will fit into my trifle bowl. I like to layer the sponge and fruit and pour over the jelly. This way the tartness of the gooseberries is offset by the sweet sponge.
The Custard: The next layer is the custard. For this you could also make a custard from scratch, but I choose the easier option and make it from a packet. In England you can buy it ready made which is wonderful, or they have custard powder that you add to milk and sugar and you get a great custard. Here in Europe you can get “Pudding” which is essentially the same thing.
I’ve bought a vanilla flavoured powder and I’m adding a little sugar, and using milk and cream to make it. I’m also adding a little of the gooseberry juice to flavour, but not too much at once as it might curdle.
Once ready I pour it over the sponge, fruit, and jelly, and it goes into the fridge for about an hour to set. As I also have lots of fruit, I’ve added another layer of gooseberries between the custard and cream.
The Cream: I don’t add any sugar to the cream as I feel it doesn’t need it. But if you have a very sweet tooth, feel free to add sugar when whipping the cream.
I spread the cream over the custard, letting it fall into peaks and I add a rose flower, a little if the stewed fruit, and some petals to decorate.
I took it to the dinner party and it was surprisingly good. It seemed to be the right combination of tartness and sweetness. The touch of cinnamon in the sponge was really good 😋
I had an absolutely gorgeous evening catching up with some wonderful people I'd not seen for over a year. We had a delicious dinner, in the most beautiful environment, and we got to have a bowl or two of gooseberry trifle 😋
