Cranberry and Orange Trifle

As I mentioned in my Christmas Day post, I made a cranberry and orange trifle for desert. It was delicious, despite the recipe being a bit of an experiment on my part, so I thought I'd share with you how I did it. Maybe it could be the centrepiece of your New Years Eve table - it's a very pretty trifle!

Orange Sponge
250g Butter
250g Caster sugar
4 large eggs
250g Self raising flour 
Zest of one Orange

1. Pop all of the ingredients in a bowl and mix together. The zest should be really finely grated and added last of all. If I was making this cake just to eat it, I'd also add about 150ml of orange juice to make it more moist, but for the bottom of a trifle you don't want it too wet. Cook at 180°C for 30 minutes until a knife comes out clean.

   

2. Cut the brown hard bits of the cake and chop down to size so it fits in the bottom of your bowl. Make sure there's no gaps, especially against the glass, where you want a lovely ring of the cream colour.
  

3. Soak in your choice of alcohol to give the trifle a bit of a kick. Ideally I would have used cointreau but that wasn't to be, so I mixed sherry, cranberry wine and orange juice and carefully covered the cake in it.

 4. Slice the orange and remove the rind. Place on top of the cake in an even layer.

5. Make a cranberry sauce by putting two handfuls of cranberries in a saucepan and covering them with orange juice and around three tablespoons of caster sugar. You can use more sugar if you want, it depends how sweet you want the sauce. Boil until thick and leave to cool before covering the oranges.

  
  
6. Cover with another layer of cake and a layer of custard. If you're feeling adventurous or have a lot of time you could make your own custard, but I went for good old ambrosia. 

7. Whip some cream and top the custard. Sprinkle the cream with anything you fancy - ideally with leftover cranberries, but a keen bean in this house had already nabbed the rest to make cranberry sauce for the turkey dinner.

  

Look how lovely the layers look! What did you have for pudding on Christmas Day?