Blueberry and Lemon Trifle

From Trifle: Heavenly Layers, Michelle Keogh, Penguin Books, 2012.

After Christmas I began thinking about the trifle that was made. I always seem to make the same one, with just a few variations. It was time to try something else.

I took 300g macaroons and spread them with blueberry jam. They were then broken into pieces and dropped into the trifle bowl.

It was now time to make the jelly. I squeezed juice from 4 lemons, making 240ml juice. I poured half of this into a small bowl and sprinkled on 10g gelatine. I let it stand while I made sugar syrup.

The syrup was made with 160g caster sugar in 240ml water. This was brought to the boil to dissolve the sugar. It was removed from the heat and the juice with the gelatine in it added. It was stirred until the gelatine had dissolved. The remainder of the lemon juice was added.

I now sprinkled over the macaroons a little over 100ml limoncello. They did not readily absorb the liquid. I let it stand for a few minutes but there was still limoncello at the bottom of the bowl. The jelly meanwhile had cooled so I poured it into the bowl. Now I had a bowl with the bottom filled with a lemon jelly mixed with limoncello and a lot of floating macaroons. I sprinkled a couple of handfuls of blueberries over the jelly. I covered the bowl and placed it in the refrigerator. I hoped that this was how it was meant to be and that it would all set properly.

It did set well so I now made mascarpone cream to go on top of this. I placed 300g mascarpone, 140g lemon curd and 60g caster sugar in the mixer and whisked it until the sugar had dissolved and all was well mixed. Separately I whisked 240ml cream until it had soft peaks. This was folded into the mascarpone mixture and the whole was placed over the lemon jelly and smoothed out. It went back into the refrigerator over night.

Naturally I compared this with the standard one that I usually make. While this one was very acceptable with its wonderful lemon tang, I think I still prefer the more standard trifle.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking ✔✔