The trifle recipe of your childhood....

[ImFree2doasiwant]

I dobt mean The fancy one you do now, I mean the one your nan made at Christmas in 1982.

Ours -
Trifle sponges soaked in sherry laced fruit juice (from the tinned fruit) placed into the bowl, and around the edge

Tinned fruit on top.
Strawberry jelly (made with less water than normal) on top of that, to soak into the fruit and sponge .
Once that's set, custard. Then whipped cream. Hundreds and thousands on top with some jelly diamond's if you're feeling extravagant.

I know, I know, jelly has no place in a Trifle.

Share yours, and how does it differ these days?

Same as yours, the custard was Birds powder custard. But I can’t believe how many have said whipped cream. We didn’t have the budget for cream, strictly dream topping here.

Auntie, not granma, but here goes:
Jamaica ginger cake
Tinned pears
Raspberry Jelly
Ambrosia custard
Whipped double Elmlea, two big pots
Mint matchmakers broken up little.

Every year my uncle stayed up late to eat the leftover trifle. All of it. Every year, palpitations.

I have just realised that I have partly forgotten the trifle of my childhood - how sad is that? I can't remember if it had jam on the trifle sponges or not.

But otherwise it was trifle sponges soaked in sherry; a layer of custard made with Bird's custard powder, a thick layer of whipped double cream, and decorated with glace cherries and angelica or flaked almonds. No fruit or jelly.

I wanted to make a trifle a while ago, and I looked all over for trifle sponges ... couldn't find any anywhere. Do they still exist?

Trifle sponges on the bottom, topped with tonnes raspberries, raspberry jelly, custard then dream topping. The stuff of my childhood dreams!

I try to recreate it every year, but it always goes wrong and my sponges and raspberries up floating around in the jelly - can anyone tell me where I am going wrong? I dream of those perfect layers from my youth.

I put the jelly at the bottom of my trifle. I thought that was how we always did it when I was young but my mum and sister disagree. So mine is raspberry jelly with raspberries in it, sponge, jam and berries, custard, whipped cream, hundreds and thousands and glace cherries. But it's not the recipe of my childhood which must have had the jelly layer higher up.

Sponge fingers soaked in tinned strawberries and Sherry. Strawberry jam on the next layer followed by birds custard. Then whipped double cream and flakes. I didn't realise the jelly part was so controversial! the custard layer was my favourite and it's important to have the right amount of booze... enough to be able to taste it, but not so much that it over powers the other flavours.

Oh and I almost forgot the flaked almonds to go on the top with the chocolate flakes!

ImFree2doasiwant

Same as yours more or less but also Sherry. Later on Mum used the dry trifle sponges . Also She piped Birds dream topping on it. Remember that????

I feel like we went through a dream topping phase later in the 80s, as I'm sure there was more of it than the thin layer of whipped cream we had early on. But I'm sure my mum soon decided it was inferior, and reverted to cream.

@Stillinbedat10am are you using fresh raspberries? They will float. The sponges need to be soaked, and I think defrosted frozen raspberries would stay put better.

The jelly deniers are in the minority!!

@NannyR

Ours was (and still is!) a jam Swiss roll, sliced up in the bottom of the dish, sherry and a tin of drained fruit cocktail, red jelly, made with the fruit cocktail juice, poured on top, let that set, then custard made with birds custard powder on top of that and let that set too, top with whipped cream and a crumbled up Cadbury flake.

Ours was identical to yours.

I bloody love trifle

My grandma used to make a spiced apple trifle. Wholemeal sponge at the bottom, soaked in apple juice, spiced apple jelly (homemade) and whipped cream with a flake crumbled over it. It was absolutely delicious.

@ImFree2doasiwant I'm using tinned raspberries. I tip some of the raspberry juice onto the sponges first and leave it for a couple of hours so that the sponges absorb as much of the juice as possible, then drain off any excess juice before piling the raspberries themselves on top. In theory those sponges are well weighed-down, but still the little sods float up into the jelly, taking the raspberries with them!

I bet Nigella never had this problem.

Madeira cake on the bottom
Then tinned fruit cocktail and raspberry jelly
Birds custard
Cream with hundreds and thousands and Angelica slithers

I make it pretty similarly, but with a mixture of tinned & fresh raspberries and strawberries instead of fruit cocktail, and a couple of tubs of ‘finest’ fresh custard instead of Birds

Trifle without jelly is nonsense!

Homemade sponge filled with homemade raspberry jam, allowed to dry out a little, cut in slices, layered in a bowl with homemade egg custard after each layer of sponge was doused with Harveys Bristol Cream, served with a dollop of whipped cream. The bottom layers of sponge were more sherry than sponge...

Trifle sponges, tinned raspberries, NO JELLY, Birds custard, whipped cream with fork pattern on top, and then glacé cherries and those hard silver balls

Mmmmm...trifle sponge, tinned raspberries and raspberry jelly in the bottom layer.

Symington's table cream on top of that (if you're not over 40 and don't live in the Midlands you might not know what that is - it's a bit like blamange and sadly doesn't exist any more)

Over-whipped cream on the top with patterns made in it with a fork.

That is my mum's trifle. It's wonderful.

Swiss roll and fruit cocktail soaked in raspberry jelly. Layer of birds custard on the top followed by layer of whipped cream. Sprinkles for that classy finish.

My mum's trifle was something I have never managed to successfully recreate. Mine is often a bit saggy in the middle.
It included all the usual ingredients: Swiss roll; jelly; and topped with perfectly whipped cream and decorated with glace cherries and angelica.
BUT the secret ingredient was, a small tin of evaporated milk added during the making of the custard layer. It was this that set it aside from all other trifles.
She's no longer with us but I would give anything for a bowl of her trifle right now.