Christmas Dinner, Part Two - Ina’s Trifle (Sort Of)

Dessert was a mishmash (literally) of different elements that I had handy. Anyone who saw Ina’s holiday dinner with Phoebe might have been planning to make a trifle of some sort. Ina’s served as my inspiration and I did make her pastry cream, but then I went off on my own.

The day before Christmas I had made one of those lemon pudding cake thingies…the one that divides into two layers – one cake and one custard. My recipe came from the Joy of Cooking, but they’re all over the place. Here’s one from Good Housekeeping.

Anyway, I thought that would be fun to use in the place of pound cake AND I had plenty of meringue cupcakes left over, so I decided to use those as well. I also whipped some cream and folded it into some raspberry jam.

This is how I proceeded:

I spooned some meringue in the bottom of a bowl and covered that with big spoonfuls of my lemon pudding cake.

Then a layer of pastry cream went over,

and then a swirl of the raspberry whipped cream, which I made sure covered the edges.

THEN more meringue,

more lemon pudding cake,

more raspberry cream,

and more pastry cream.

I called it a day with some whipped cream rosettes around the edge.

It was so rich and sooo good. The meringue gave it a little crunch.

I hope your Christmas ended on a sweet note and that you're still eating plenty of yummy leftovers and visiting with friends and family.