Chocolate Raspberry Trifle

I served this trifle Monday- U. S. Memorial Day in Poland.  We had friends over, more because Gail was leaving to return to the states than because of the holiday.  We made Spanish food, some of my favorites – sangria, gazpacho, pinchos morunos.  We deviated from the Spanish theme for dessert, trifle rather than flan.

Raspberries aren’t available here yet, but cherries are, so I my trifle was Black Forest-like.   There’s nothing complicated about it, but I did start making it several days in advance.

First the cake –  a gensoise, flavored with lots of dark chocolate.  The batter has 8 eggs, and I beat them for 25 minutes to get the right texture and volume.  After reading about Rose’s failure on her blog, I’m glad I didn’t skimp on the time.  I was using a very flared salad bowl rather than a trifle bowl, so I didn’t try to make 2 9-inch pans (they won’t both fit in my oven), so I just made a 9 x 13 and placed slices to make my layers of cake.

The Creme Anglaise was next.  A dozen egg yolks go into this component.  The custard is layered with cake which has been coated on one side with cherry preserves (in my case) and brushed with a cherry syrup on the other side.  Fresh cherries which were patiently and lovingly sliced and pitted by my own little hands are also included in between the cake layers.  (It didn’t take many cherries for me to realize that raspberries would have been much simpler.)

The cake/custard/fruit layers were finally topped with a lucious pink, cherry whipped cream.  It was a big hit with our dinner guests.

Our Polish friend, Aga, said, “you couldn’t buy something like this: it’s so special.  It should be for a wedding or something.”  Aga’s brother is getting married next weekend, and she had just told us that the festivites go on for about 3 days, so you would need more in the way of dessert around the house than just the wedding cake.

Bill L. liked it because it wasn’t too sweet.

Patrick hit the nail on the head when he said that there were so many different flavors.

This has been quite the week for eggs.  This dish took 20 eggs.  And yesterday, I came home with 20 farm fresh eggs and half a kilo of farmer’s cheese.  A gift of eggs and time from my Polish friend,Elżbieta.  She took me to visit the farm where she and all of her friends buy their eggs.  It was a fun day and you can read more about it on my Polish blog.

Unlike my other blog posts, as part of the Heavenly Cake Bakers, I don’t post recipes from this book on the Internet. One of the reasons for this baking group is to encourage readers to purchase the cookbook. That strategy worked on me! After follow the group’s baking adventures for a couple of months, I ordered a copy from Amazon because I wanted join in.