Friday Feast - Black Forest Trifle

'Tis almost the season of naughty desserts and everything else that goes with the Christmas and New Year festivities :) I've been slipping a bit on Friday Feasts so here's a really easy but very indulgent recipe by James Martin to make up for it a bit:

Black Forest Trifle

Serves 8

500ml tub ready-made chilled custard - look for one with real vanilla seeds
100g plain chocolate, broken into pieces
400g chocolate brownies - see my notes below
2 x 390g jars cherries in kirsch or similar - see my notes below
300g tub double cream
200ml tub crème fraîche
25g icing sugar
Grated chocolate, to decorate, and fresh cherries (optional)

Put the custard into a pan with the chocolate pieces. Gently heat, stirring,
until the chocolate has melted into the custard. Cover with cling film and
cool.

Arrange the brownies in the base of a trifle bowl. Drain the jars of cherries,
reserving the liquid, and scatter over the brownies. Drizzle over 100ml
reserved liquid. Spoon the cooled chocolate custard over and chill while
you make the topping.

Lightly whip the cream with the crème fraîche and icing sugar until soft
peaks form. Chill until ready to serve, then pile on top of the trifle and
decorate with grated chocolate and fresh cherries, if you like.

Things I do: the recipe truly is very rich and I think chocolate brownies could be too heavy so I substituted chocolate muffins, even a good old fashioned unadorned chocolate swiss roll would do the trick but you try finding one of those elusive creatures these days!

Also, jars of cherries in kirsch cost an arm and a leg - I bought just one jar plus a tin of black cherries, there was more than 100ml of (hic!) kirsch/cherry liquid in the one jar to use.

I bought the teeny little chocolate hearts, made by Silver Spoon and found in Sainsburys baking section - and added flaked toasted almonds along with some of the cherries in kirsch which I'd reserved

Finally, this was to take to friends so I used disposable dishes - the ingredients made two trifles as shown above so you do need a decent sized trifle dish.

As I said, it's a typical James Martin recipe so it's quite an indulgent dessert and I doubt if you could eat a lot of it - but for chocolate lovers it's truly yummy!

Hide the bathroom scales and enjoy!

Di
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