Mum’s always been the maestro pavlova maker in the family. This year, she struggled to find the recipe and to remember how she made it. She eventually tracked down the old recipe book with the recipe written in careful capitals. There was no complete method however, but I remembered my sister saying that our brother, who makes an excellent pavlova, adds the sugar at one minute intervals. And so it fell to a rather nervous me to make the pavlova for a family early Christmas dinner today.
Plenty of time for a selfie during the one-minute intervalsFresh out of the oven
The secret of a good pavlova is to beat it for so long it has no choice but to stand up. It collapses a bit as it cools, but that is easily covered with whipped cream and strawberries. I forgot to take a photo of the end result, but it passed the test at the dinner, thankfully.
Today, I was concerned that the feijoas I had picked up from under the young feijoa tree were going to be wasted. I needed (yes, really) to make a dessert, and was planning an apple crumble when it occurred to me that the feijoas might go well with it. I googled, and before I could put even a single letter, or even a space, after ‘feijoa’ up popped a feijoa and apple crumble recipe. Can it read my mind? I wondered (one of those spooky internet moments). I guess there are simply thousands of people all over the country looking for easy ways to use their feijoas which are abundant at this time of the year. I used the first one in the list, but there were hundreds of them. I had a cup less of feijoa pulp than the recipe required, but it is delicious anyway.
A friend with a very productive garden gave us some pumpkin this afternoon as we left her house after playing cards. I was intending to make an apricot dessert that evening, but one of our card players suggested pumpkin pie.
I found a recipe in my ancient Edmonds Cookbook, but used the short pastry recipe from another book. I had more pumpkin than I needed and used it all by doubling the recipe for the filling. I used half yoghurt and half milk, and golden syrup instead of treacle. After I’d boiled the pumpkin until it was just soft, I realised the recipe said to bake the pumpkin. That would have taken too long, but would have produced a drier pumpkin with more intense taste, I imagine.
An ancient Edmonds CookbookPumpkin Pie ready for the oven – the apricots are looked forward to for another dayThere were a lot of dishes afterwards!Forty minutes later it came out of the ovenCream on top for Mum and yoghurt for me
It tastes very nice; spicy with cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. The pastry was a little hard to cut through with a spoon, perhaps because I used a recipe with one cup of flour instead of the two cups suggested in the Edmonds book, but I prefer a thinner crust. The pie will last us for several days. Yum!
The finished trifle, photo bombed by a Christmas elf
You have to wonder why this creation is called a ‘trifle’. It’s a complicated assemblage of ingredients over two days – well, this version at least. The particular trifle I undertook to make for Christmas dinner is called Strawberry Daiquiri Trifle. It involves jelly, sliced strawberries, vanilla bean custard, sponge fingers, rum and lime syrup and a final layer of whipped cream and macerated strawberries. I opted out of making the sponge fingers and vanilla bean custard and sourced them in two different supermarkets – and topped up my white rum supply while I was out. My penchant for cocktails seems to have influenced my choosing this particular dessert.
Then began the making of jelly, refrigerating (I had to remove a shelf to fit the dish in) and waiting before adding strawberries, more refrigerating (overnight), making rum and lime syrup into half of which went more strawberries to soak overnight and, next day, layering the custard, the sponge fingers drizzled with rum syrup, and more strawberries, and more hours of refrigeration. No trifling matter.
Macerated and jellied strawberriesFirst layers of custard and sponge fingersMore strawberriesReady for the final 4 hours of refrigeration
Before serving, a topping of cream and macerated strawberries is added. The end result is anything but ‘a trifle’. It weighs a ton. But it does look spectacular.
My niece caught me looking very pleased with the result…or is that expression a consequence of too much bubbly?
Grasping an invisible glass
My sister looks delighted too – not to mention delightful.
The trifle aftermath is less spectacular. The structure that makes it visually pleasing collapses into a mess of custard, cream and soggy strawberries as soon as you dig into it. That visual disappointment seems to affect the taste which is perhaps unbalanced, although some texture from the sponge fingers and the subtle flavour of rum and lime are perceptible.
Despite that, I and (I suspect) the Christmas elves, are happy to have the left-overs for breakfast – and perhaps a trifle more for lunch today, Boxing Day. On a philosophical note, perhaps the greatest pleasures of our lives are, in sum, made up of everyday trifles.
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