Gingerbread Trifle Part 2

YAY!  It's morning and time to finish my trifle.  Last night I made the berry sauce.  After I made it, I was on NM and one of my NM peeps sent me the link to a video of Bobby Flay making this trifle.  I watched the video and laughed.  As usual, the Food Network website shows a recipe that doesn't exactly match what the chef actually did.  I'm used to this, the recipe is never right but usually between reading all the reviews and remembering what the chef did on TV, things work out.  In this case, Bobby mixed the cake totally differently than it showed in the recipe.  The ingredients were the same, but he didn't cream the butter first and just kind of dumped all the liquid ingredients in at the same time.  Also, in the berry sauce, he used some water.   That wasn't in the recipe, and I didn't add water to mine.  Also, as a recovering alcoholic, I don't keep random liquors in the house so didn't add the framboise.  I'm sure it's going to be just fine.

Put all the berries in a pan with the sugar and bring to a boil.

Turn down the burner and simmer for a while.  When the berries are soft and the sugar is all dissolved, and in my case when I thought it looked done, take off the stove.  Transfer to a blender.  As I was getting out the blender, I remembered that the last time I used it several months ago, I found out the carafe was broken.  Technically just the plastic thing at the bottom that holds the stuff in the carafe.  This took a while to negotiate.  First I threw the whole thing away.  Then I thought maybe I could buy a new carafe or plastic thing, so I took it out of the trash and put it in the laundry room.  Then I got out the Magic Bullet, and put about half the mixture into one of the cups. 

The lid didn't screw on correctly so some of the juice came out while I was mixing it.  I transferred everything into a different cup and tried again, and this time everything worked.   After blending, pour the mixture into a sieve over a bowl to drain out the seeds.  I'm really glad that I thought to do all this in the sink!

After I sifted out the seeds, I poured the sauce into a container and put it in the refrigerator.  Based on a taste test (or 12), this sauce is going to be delicious with the lemon curd and gingerbread. 

See that wooden spatula?  This was a Christmas gift back in the 1990s.  A coworker gave it to me, along with a smaller one.  His father makes them.  It turns out his father is a woodworker and makes all kinds of awesome things.  His mother is a weaver named Celeste.  Matt was raised by hippies, it seems.  We shared an office, and his birthday was the day before mine (only about 20 years later).  Matt was one of the funnest people I've ever worked with.  I like these spatulas so much that I ordered another set off of Matt's Dad's website, and over the years have ordered more of them for gifts.  Here is the website, if you'd like to see what else Matt's Dad makes.   It's worth a look.

http://www.turnstylesonline.com/Turnstyles2.htm

Now to make the whipped cream.  You know what to do.  Chill your bowl and beaters, then pour the cream into the bowl and whip it until it becomes whipped cream. 

Pour the lemon curd into a bowl and whip it around to fluff it up.  Fold half of the whipped cream into the lemon curd.  Save the other half for the top of the trifle.

Now you just start layering the ingredients in a trifle bowl.  Cut the gingerbread into whatever size chunks you need to fill in the spaces.

I had about 1/5 of the cake left when I was finished making the trifle.  (yay!)

After the gingerbread layer, put in 1/3 of the lemon curd mixture, and then 1/3 of the berry sauce.

Don't try to be neat - it's supposed to look like this

Make two more layers, and then put on the rest of the whipped cream.  I didn't have enough whipped cream so I kind of swirled it with the top layer and spread it out the best I could.  I had saved some berries to put on top, but forgot about them and left them on the counter all night.  I used them anyway. 



I will probably shave some chocolate over this before I serve it, to make it look prettier.  This is going to be delicious!