Whoa. Trifle is a bit…much. But what is one to do when one has most of a batch of apple pie filling left? Right. Make a pie. (Or make apple cinnamon oatmeal. Or eat it on vanilla ice cream. Whatever.)
But I’ve been contemplating combinations of deliciousness that could make a good trifle since I began this pandemic baking adventure, and this is the first time that I’ve thought of something that includes the traditional fruit element.
The plan:
- oatmeal muffins, baked as a loaf, for the cake component;
- apple pie filling;
- vanilla custard; and
- the cream cheese layer from this recipe.
Oatmeal cake: next time I’ll bake it at 350, which is 75 degrees lower than the muffin recipe calls for. The edges were a bit burnt tasting, but the cake itself (I made it without blueberries, by the way) was tasty and was a nice hearty contrast to the custard and cream in the trifle. (Look how well it came out of the loaf pan! It was a non-stick pan, and I buttered it with the bits of butter left in the pan from melting it for the recipe.)
Apple pie filling: this was in the fridge from earlier in the week. Just as good as the day I made it.
Custard: I made only half the custard recipe. It wasn’t that using eight egg yolks was so intimidating, more that having eight egg whites left over was going to be a challenge! Also, I didn’t think I needed as much custard as the recipe would make, and it turned out I was right.
Whipped cream: My guess is that most trifle recipes call for straight whipped cream, but the recipe I linked to above combines whipped cream with cream cheese and OH MY YUM. Highly recommended.
My parents don’t have a trifle dish (my mom says that she almost bought one when she worked at a kitchen store, but if she had, this would have been the first time it got used, 20 years later. So it’s for the best that she didn’t buy it) so I used the closest thing they have, which is a brown glass bowl. You can’t see the layers (sorry, Paul and Mary) but that’s okay. Really, it’s the taste that’s important, right?
Mom said she’d have this again. I’d have it again if someone else washed the dishes.
