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Copyright © 2025 Foodies Only
Copyright © 2025 Foodies Only
5 min
23/12/2025
This trifle is perfect for anyone who is regretting not planning a dessert for Christmas or just doesn’t want to put any effort into it. With a store-bought cake, premade custard and a good fruit jam, this easy-to-prepare and assemble trifle can be layered together and served to your friends and family within 10 minutes.
While traditional or classic trifles do have their place, they do require a great deal of time to prepare. However, the recipe here provides the same feel and benefit of the traditional trifle without the heavy workload and time commitment. By playing off the differences in texture and temp between the cake, custard and jam create a "drama" of sorts; however, you really get all of the elements a traditional Christmas dessert delivers, without needing to use anything more than a spoon and a bowl.
The key with trifle is the contrast between the textures and hot plus cold sensations. The use of the pre-made ingredients helps to deliver the contrast, and the "drama" just serves to enhance the experience of eating a Christmas Dessert. The best thing to keep in mind when it comes to making a Christmas Dessert is that it should be generous, not perfect. This particular trifle recipe is designed for those who have spent a great deal of time cooking and preparing their Christmas Meal, but for guests to enjoy, they are not concerned with how much time you have put into creating a dessert, only how good it tastes.
You can use any basic sponge, whether it's a vanilla loaf, leftover pound cake, or even slices of thick store-bought Swiss roll. In fact, the drier the cake is, the better it will soak up flavour without falling apart. Tear or cube the cake into rough pieces; the rough edge creates an area for custard and jam to collect. If you think the cake would be too bland without sweetness, that's perfect. The layers of this dessert will provide the flavour, but not the sweetness.
Jam is a combination of fruit, sugar, and sauce in one spoonful. While berry jams (strawberry, raspberry, mixed fruit) are often used in the traditional version of this dessert, Christmas is a wonderful time for experimentation with alternative flavours. Orange marmalade and plum jam taste great if balanced with enough custard. If your jam is very thick, warm it slightly to allow for better spreading and for it to soak into the cake, creating the illusion of "aged overnight."
Using prepared custard will save you time and provide the trifle with a classic and rich appearance and texture. Cold custard can be poured and used to create "clean" layers, and if you would like a more rustic look, slightly loosen the custard before pouring. The typical flavour for custard is vanilla; however, if you are fortunate enough to find a custard with more cream or more eggs than the traditional recipe, you may wish to substitute it in place of the normal vanilla custard or vanilla custard mixes to achieve the depth of flavour similar to that of homemade custard.
To construct your trifle, layer it starting at the base layer with your cake, followed by a sprinkling of jam over the top so the jam oozes down into the cracks formed by pressing on the cake top, otherwise smooth. Next, pour on your custard in a waterfall effect (not in a finely smoothed out manner). Repeat this layering two more times, depending upon the size of your bowl, until the mixture looks full and abundant. Your trifle should look abundant and confident, not like something put together like an artist with a pair of tweezers.
If you have whipped cream available, put as much on top of your trifle as you wish. If not, don’t stress. Lightly sweetened soft cream, spooned on loosely, makes for a perfect replacement for whipped cream on top of your trifle. Chilled custard as the final layer is acceptable. You want the last layer to have a soft, cloudy, inviting look.
This is where your personality comes into play. Adding crushed cookies, grated chocolate, pomegranate seeds, chopped nuts, or even a light dusting of cocoa powder will instantly give you the feeling of a holiday treat. While you are not decorating a cake, you are finishing off a bowl of dessert. Use plenty of layers, but make sure your layers are not perfectly stacked on each other; they should have an abundance of texture and look slightly dishevelled and warm and inviting.
You can serve the trifle immediately after layering for a sharper bite, or allow it to rest for 15 to 20 minutes to allow the layers to soften slightly and become less distinct and form a more unified, spoon-able, dessert. Either method is fine. Serve it fresh to your guests if they are already seated, or if not, if you need more time before they arrive, your prepared trifle will keep perfectly well without issue.
No matter how busy you are or how many activities you have, this dessert can be made without any prior preparation or tools. Most importantly, it tastes like you spent hours preparing it, but it takes very little actual work to create (although it does require a little finesse). It’s an excellent reminder during the holiday season, when many of us are overcommitted, that food doesn’t have to be difficult to have joy—it just needs to be layered well and made with confidence.
