With its creamy custard base, raspberry jam swirl, and bits of sherry soaked cake, this English Trifle Ice Cream is a nod to our Auntie Ev’s English trifle, but in ice cream form.
Don’t miss my round up of all my ice cream recipes.
Our family lost our Auntie Ev four years ago. While we miss her every day, she is always in our hearts, and we know we can bring her spirit even closer by making the foods that were her signatures. Lemon pound cake. Plum pudding. Angel slices. Trifle.
Oh, how I love Auntie Ev’s trifle. I even served it at the restaurant for awhile, and it was a huge hit. While I know that trifle is a dessert whose sole purpose was to get rid of bits of cake and jam and custard and can take many forms, our family’s favorite–the only trifle we have ever made, really–is Auntie Ev’s: layers of lemon pound cake soaked with cream sherry, raspberry jam–with seeds, please, rich vanilla pudding and whipped cream. This is a perfect combination. Rather, it is my perfect combination. You might have other ideas, so when you make your English Trifle Ice Cream, it may be different from mine. But at least you’ll know it’s possible.
I have to admit that I wavered between making pound cake or sponge cake, and pound cake won out, mainly because it was our traditional trifle base. But, I suggest you make a sponge cake. Use a cake with very little fat in it so it doesn’t get really hard in the freezer. In the recipe, I’m sharing the sponge cake version, but if you are feeling pound cake-ish and don’t mind frozen butter, by all means, make a pound cake.
As with all the Ice Cream Tuesdays, you certainly don’t have to make all the components. As a matter of fact, the custard base can stand alone as a rich French Vanilla ice cream, just waiting for you to douse it with hot fudge or strawberry sauce or roasted bananas or whatever sounds good to you. It’s really just my scalable vanilla pudding recipe made with slightly more fat (a mixture of half and half and whole milk rather than just whole milk), a touch more sugar and half the starch. It churns beautifully into a rich, creamy, wonderful ice cream all on its own.
Oh, I have also made a video for you! It’s only a couple of minutes long, and it outlines the procedure for making this ice cream. Watch it for a great tip about churning as well as for a cameo appearance by Sam the cat. And if you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel yet, I hope that you will now.
And now, onto the English Trifle Ice Cream.
Rich vanilla custard, boozy pound cake, raspberry jam. You'll have everyone saying "More, please!"
I'm providing a recipe for sponge cake, but you can use any cake--store bought is fine or any cake that needs to be used up.
This recipe makes about 2 quarts of ice cream.
2Tablespoonsvanilla paste(or toss a whole split and scraped vanilla bean in the pot right along with everything else)
For the Cake
about 2 cups diced cake, slightly stale (lemon sponge cake or pound cake, for example)
4oz1/2 cup cream sherry
½oz1 Tablespoon corn syrup
For the Raspberry Jam
10ozfrozen raspberries(I used an organic brand)
8ozby weight, a slightly generous cup granulated sugar
1Tablespoonfreshly squeezed lemon juice
pinchof kosher salt
To Assemble
2Tablespoonscream sherry
pinchof kosher salt
Instructions
For the Custard
Combine all the ingredients except for the vanilla in a large sauce pan.
Put the vanilla in a large metal bow or pot, and have a fine mesh strainer handy. Set aside.
Whisk the custard ingredients constantly over medium heat until the mixture comes to a boil. It may foam up quite a bit, so watch your heat.
Let boil for about 10 seconds to thicken and cook off the starch taste, and then strain through the fine mesh strainer into the bowl with the vanilla in it.
Chill in an ice bath until 39-40F, about 40 minutes. (If you don't want to churn the same day, chill until at least cool and then refrigerate overnight.)
Churn in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.
For the Cake
Heat the sherry and the corn syrup together to dissolve the syrup. Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature.
Drizzle the sherry evenly over the diced cake, and then put the cake in the freezer until you need it.
For the Jam
Bring all the ingredients to a boil and then simmer on low heat, stirring frequently, until "jammy." To test it, grab some of the jam with your spatula. Hold it up and let it run back into the pan. When the jam runs off the spatula in sheets rather than individual drips and drops, you will know you're done. This will take about 30 minutes or so.
Cool completely.
To Assemble the ice cream.
Loosen up the jam by stirring in 2 Tablespoons of cream sherry.
Fold the frozen cake pieces into your freshly churned custard base.
Layer in jam and custard, beginning with jam and ending with custard. I did 3 additions of each.
Swirl a knife up and down through the layers, press plastic wrap directly on the surface of the ice cream and freeze for at least 4 hours, although 6-8 is better, at least in my freezer.
As I said before, don’t limit yourself to the components I used. Switch up the jam flavor, and if you have an excellent store-bought jam, by all means use it. While I am admittedly biased about what makes a perfect trifle, you might have your own ideas. Put them into practice and make your own version of English Trifle Ice Cream!
Thanks for spending some time with me today. Enjoy the ice cream, and if you have any flavor requests, let me know.
Have a lovely day.
Join in Today!
My Top 5 Secrets to Becoming Fearless in the Kitchen
Plus weekly new recipes, how-tos, tips, tricks, and everything in between
Thanks, Dina! I’m partial to it because it really does taste so much like my family’s trifle. If you like raspberry jam and sherry, I betcha you’ll love it. =)
Your ice cream looks delicious and it is so unique! I love your style. I am super bummed that I missed your video. I’m going to take a peek now and I know Tay will be excited to see the cameo! And the ice cream of course.
Hooray for ice cream Tuesday! Tell Taylor that Sam and I both say hi, Dionne! And thank you–this trifle is truly one of my favorites, so it was fun to turn it into ice cream. The flavor is almost exactly the same. =)
Thank you!! I’m pretty happy with the video–I feel like it’s pretty long, but there’s a lot going on in this ice cream that needed some air time! lol =)
Our family lost our Auntie Ev four years ago. While we miss her every day, she is always in our hearts, and we know we can bring her spirit even closer by making the foods that were her signatures. Lemon pound cake. Plum pudding. Angel slices. Trifle.
Oh, how I love Auntie Ev’s trifle. I even served it at the restaurant for awhile, and it was a huge hit. While I know that trifle is a dessert whose sole purpose was to get rid of bits of cake and jam and custard and can take many forms, our family’s favorite–the only trifle we have ever made, really–is Auntie Ev’s: layers of lemon pound cake soaked with cream sherry, raspberry jam–with seeds, please, rich vanilla pudding and whipped cream. This is a perfect combination. Rather, it is my perfect combination. You might have other ideas, so when you make your English Trifle Ice Cream, it may be different from mine. But at least you’ll know it’s possible.
I have to admit that I wavered between making pound cake or sponge cake, and pound cake won out, mainly because it was our traditional trifle base. But, I suggest you make a sponge cake. Use a cake with very little fat in it so it doesn’t get really hard in the freezer. In the recipe, I’m sharing the sponge cake version, but if you are feeling pound cake-ish and don’t mind frozen butter, by all means, make a pound cake.
As with all the Ice Cream Tuesdays, you certainly don’t have to make all the components. As a matter of fact, the custard base can stand alone as a rich French Vanilla ice cream, just waiting for you to douse it with hot fudge or strawberry sauce or roasted bananas or whatever sounds good to you. It’s really just my scalable vanilla pudding recipe made with slightly more fat (a mixture of half and half and whole milk rather than just whole milk), a touch more sugar and half the starch. It churns beautifully into a rich, creamy, wonderful ice cream all on its own.
Oh, I have also made a video for you! It’s only a couple of minutes long, and it outlines the procedure for making this ice cream. Watch it for a great tip about churning as well as for a cameo appearance by Sam the cat. And if you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel yet, I hope that you will now.
And now, onto the English Trifle Ice Cream.
As I said before, don’t limit yourself to the components I used. Switch up the jam flavor, and if you have an excellent store-bought jam, by all means use it. While I am admittedly biased about what makes a perfect trifle, you might have your own ideas. Put them into practice and make your own version of English Trifle Ice Cream!
Thanks for spending some time with me today. Enjoy the ice cream, and if you have any flavor requests, let me know.
Have a lovely day.
Our family lost our Auntie Ev four years ago. While we miss her every day, she is always in our hearts, and we know we can bring her spirit even closer by making the foods that were her signatures. Lemon pound cake. Plum pudding. Angel slices. Trifle.
Oh, how I love Auntie Ev’s trifle. I even served it at the restaurant for awhile, and it was a huge hit. While I know that trifle is a dessert whose sole purpose was to get rid of bits of cake and jam and custard and can take many forms, our family’s favorite–the only trifle we have ever made, really–is Auntie Ev’s: layers of lemon pound cake soaked with cream sherry, raspberry jam–with seeds, please, rich vanilla pudding and whipped cream. This is a perfect combination. Rather, it is my perfect combination. You might have other ideas, so when you make your English Trifle Ice Cream, it may be different from mine. But at least you’ll know it’s possible.
I have to admit that I wavered between making pound cake or sponge cake, and pound cake won out, mainly because it was our traditional trifle base. But, I suggest you make a sponge cake. Use a cake with very little fat in it so it doesn’t get really hard in the freezer. In the recipe, I’m sharing the sponge cake version, but if you are feeling pound cake-ish and don’t mind frozen butter, by all means, make a pound cake.
As with all the Ice Cream Tuesdays, you certainly don’t have to make all the components. As a matter of fact, the custard base can stand alone as a rich French Vanilla ice cream, just waiting for you to douse it with hot fudge or strawberry sauce or roasted bananas or whatever sounds good to you. It’s really just my scalable vanilla pudding recipe made with slightly more fat (a mixture of half and half and whole milk rather than just whole milk), a touch more sugar and half the starch. It churns beautifully into a rich, creamy, wonderful ice cream all on its own.
Oh, I have also made a video for you! It’s only a couple of minutes long, and it outlines the procedure for making this ice cream. Watch it for a great tip about churning as well as for a cameo appearance by Sam the cat. And if you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel yet, I hope that you will now.
And now, onto the English Trifle Ice Cream.
Thanks for spending some time with me today. Enjoy the ice cream, and if you have any flavor requests, let me know.
Have a lovely day.
what a unique flavor. it sounds delicious!
Thanks, Dina! I’m partial to it because it really does taste so much like my family’s trifle. If you like raspberry jam and sherry, I betcha you’ll love it. =)
Your ice cream looks delicious and it is so unique! I love your style. I am super bummed that I missed your video. I’m going to take a peek now and I know Tay will be excited to see the cameo! And the ice cream of course.
Hooray for ice cream Tuesday! Tell Taylor that Sam and I both say hi, Dionne! And thank you–this trifle is truly one of my favorites, so it was fun to turn it into ice cream. The flavor is almost exactly the same. =)
My tummy is doing back flips, Miss J!! <3
Then you’d better not have any, Bex. Especially after the unfortunate gorging incident from yesterday… 😉 =D
Hip Hip HORRAY for Aunti Ev – t his recipe is completely insane! Loving everything about it from the video to the sherry soaked cake.
Thank you!! I’m pretty happy with the video–I feel like it’s pretty long, but there’s a lot going on in this ice cream that needed some air time! lol =)
This is one ridiculously awesome ice cream, love the flavoring!!!! Beautiful pictures too.
Thank you so much, Matt! I think I’m having more fun with Ice Cream Tuesday than I probably should! lol =)