chocolate trifle

Look! A completely unhealthy recipe from me!!!! Well, ok, it has no trans fats. I guess this is as unhealthy as I get. This recipe is a bit long and complicated if you've never made any of the components before. If you have, it's totally easy. I'm going to be a bit cruel and assume that you're capable of the components, mostly because I'm typing on Stirling's computer and it's nasty so I don't want to type more than I have to.


Components:

1 8" chocolate sponge cake (halving a regular recipe seems to work nicely)
about 2/3 cup tart red fruit compote (I used wild cranberries and dried sour cherries, made with red wine and port)
chocolate custard (make regular custard, melt chocolate with a bit of butter, stir together while both are a bit warm & let cool)
whipped cream

(Eeeeewww I just saw Steven Sabados & Chris Hyndeman (designer guys) hocking flavoured coffee mate on tv. I just lost any sort of respect for them I ever had. Sellouts.)

Back to the trifle. Find some sort of serving bowl that will be deep enough for 3 decent layers, and which will take the least amount of hacking to the sponge cake to make it fit. Hack the sponge as necessary and put it in the bottom of the bowl, spongier side UP. Sprinkle with some sort of sweet/tart hard alcohol. I used sloe gin, but I gather that's hard to come by in this country so cherry brandy would work, or something like that. Port probably isn't quite alcoholic enough. If you used cherries in the compote you could also use a nut liquer. Spoon the compote over the cake and spread around. Top with the cooled chocolate custard. Top that with whipped cream, and garnish with chocolate shavings.

The thing that really works with this is the intense tart fruit and the rich chocolate flavour. As long as you preserve that constrast, you can substitute pretty much anything.