Broke-Ass Recipes: Trifle

The word “trifle” was first used in a culinary context in 1585, appearing in The Good Husvvifes Ievvell, a cookbook by English author Thomas Dawson. The term referred to a thick cream flavoured with sugar, ginger and rosewater. By the middle 18th century, the recipe evolved to entail setting biscuits in jelly and topping that with thick sweet cream and then syllabub, a confection made by curdling sweet cream with wine or cider.

Of all the desserts, trifle is probably the easiest to make, as it requires no baking and minimal cooking if any at all.

First, you will need to boil water in a pot large enough to halfway submerge a jar of Nutella chocolate-hazelnut spread. As the water simmers, prepare a mixture of 187 milliliters of Moscato, the same amount of orange juice and a few splashes of gentian bitters in a tall glass. After that, find a bowl big enough to contain six ounces each of vanilla yogurt and coconut cream spiked with a shot or two of Cointreau triple sec as a preservative and flavoring agent and mix all that up to a uniform consistency. As soon as the water has reached a boil, turn off the heat and carefully set the jar of Nutella upright in the pot. Let it stand for about five minutes or so, or until the Nutella is soft and pliable.

Next, fetch a 7-cup Pyrex bowl with a flat bottom. Get a regular-sized box of vanilla wafers, and one by one, dunk them in the mixture of orange juice, Moscato and bitters and set them on the bottom until it is completely covered. You can also drop a little of the mixture into the bowl to ensure that the wafers get nice and moist. Though this part of the process is admittedly tedious, the good thing is that once the last vanilla wafer is in place, you will have enough of the mixture left over to treat yourself to a little drink.

Next, spread a layer of berry preserves (preferably the kind with bits of real fruit) atop the layer of wafers, then cover that with the Nutella. After that, layer the mixture of vanilla yogurt on top of the Nutella. Repeat these steps until the bowl is just about filled to the top. Let it sit in the fridge covered overnight to guarantee that the flavors blend together and the vanilla wafers get nice and soft. When you serve it, top it with some whipped cream if you want.

So, what will it cost?

For now, Target sells store-brand vanilla wafers for $3.50, small 11.5-ounce bottles of orange juice at about $2, single servings of vanilla yogurt for just under a buck, jars of berry preserves for about $4, jars of own-brand chocolate hazelnut spread for $3 and cans of coconut cream and aerosols of whipped cream for $2.50 each. At Fred’s Liquor and Deli at 151 6th Street in San Francisco, California, you can get miniature bottles of Moscato for $2, but pay cash to avoid a merchant services surcharge. At BevMo, a minibar bottle of Cointreau costs about $5, and Underberg bitters will run you $7.

So, you’ll be spending about $30 to $37.50 depending on whether or not you top your trifle with whipped cream and how much Cointreau you decide to use, but that will be a small price to pay for possibly ending up the most popular person at the Christmas potluck.

By James Conrad.

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