Cooling the custard to keep from cracking the container
Many of the ‘traditional’ foods we eat around Christmas are English. Yet for generations, English ‘cookery’ has enjoyed a well-earned reputation for ghastliness. Bangers (bready sausages), toad in the hole (bready sausages in bready egg custard), nettle pudding, and spotted dick (now I ask you!).
One of the exceptions to this ghastly Victorian gastronomy is trifle, a spectacular way to use up leftover sponge cake — something the English seem to have stashed in every pantry and cabinet for emergencies. The sorta-stale cake is layered with raspberry jam or jelly, sherry, fruit, custard and whipped cream — the real stuff, not the stuff that splurts out of a can. Made in a cut glass bowl so you can see the layers, it’s also — as Martha Stewart would say – pretty. In serving, you’ve got to be sure to dive down to the bottom for each bowlful in order to get it all.
Layered English Trifle
English Christmas Trifle
1 homemade sponge cake, broken into pieces
1 small packet of raspberry Jello dissolved in 1 cup boiling water with 1 cup sherry
1 15. oz. tin of apricots or 1 10 oz. packet of dried (but soft) apricots, chopped
2 cups custard sauce made with Bird’s Custard Powder
1 cup whipping cream
Break sponge cake into pieces into bottom of a bowl. Dissolve raspberry Jello and allow to cool before pouring it into a crystal bowl. (Too hot and it will crack or shatter the bowl). Once cooled to bathwater temp, pour into cake, drenching all of it. Arrange apricots on top of drenched cake. Make custard according to package directions. Allow to cool, whisking occasionally to prevent lumps, to bathwater temperature (for the same reason as above). When cool enough, cover the cake and apricots with custard. Whip cream and cover the custard with it. Chill completely before serving.
Raspberry Jello with sherry and chopped apricots, and Bird's Custard Powder
I grew up sailing and building boats with my dad, married a tugboat captain, (who I'm still happily married to) and embarked on a life of adventure, challenge and fun. My first book, Woman in the Wheelhouse, told the sometimes harrowing story of working on an old coastal tugboat as cook/deckhand then worked in Mexico in the Campeche oil fields on a supply boat. I was one of the first women in the country to earn a tug operator's license. I'm the author of three other books, Course of the Waterman, which won the Fred Bonnie Prize for the novel, the historical novel, A Love Like No Other: Abigail and John Adams, A Modern Love Story, and OK Now What? A Caregiver's Guide to What Matters, which I wrote with longtime RN and hospice nurse, Sue Collins during the time my mother-in-law was moving to the end of her life.
My second, Course of the Waterman, the coming of age novel of a young Eastern Shore waterman, won the Fred Bonnie award in 2004. My third book, second novel, A Love Like No Other: Abigail and John Adams, A Modern Love Story, takes readers into the lives of the new nation's strong-willed second First Lady and her stubborn, often-absent and adored husband, John, our second US President. I wrote the book because I'd spent big chunks of time raising children alone while my husband was at sea and felt an affinity for Abigail, but also looked to her life as a MUCH bigger challenge that informed and encouraged my own. My fourth book, OK Now What? A Caregiver's Guide to What Matters (Head to Wind Publishing, 2014) was written in collaboration with Sue Collins, RN and longtime hospice nurse and has received heartwarming feedback on how helpful it's been to many caregivers.
A freelance writer for many years, I've published personal essays, features, maritime reporting and analysis, travel, garden and more for such places as The Washington Post, Yachting, House Beautiful, The Baltimore Sun, the Christian Science Monitor, Southern Living, Sailing, and more. I'm also a University of Maryland Master Gardener who grows and cans the family's fruits and vegetables, and a Bay-Wise program certifier. I write, sail, race sailboats (occasionally), walk the German Shepherd dogs, and cook for friends and family.
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Nancy Taylor Robson 