I received a box of Christmas foods from Creamline Dairies and I was asked to cook nice things with it, this gingerbread trifle one of the nice things.

Growing up, Christmas wasn’t Christmas without a sherry trifle made with so much sherry you’d fail to pass a breathalyser test on the way home. Trifle was always sponge fingers soaked in about half a pint of sherry, jelly with tinned fruit in, custard, cream and sprinkles. It’s a classic, and a classic for a very good reason.

These days, as much as a hanker for a traditional trifle, sometimes I like to mix things up a bit. The year of the black forest trifle was exceptional, but this year I’ve decided to serve up a gingerbread trifle. With all new things, it’s good to do a test run so you can tweak it to perfection on the big day. I have to say, there’s very little I’d change about this.

This week I received a Christmas food box from Creamline Diaries. I chose a selection of foods from their Christmas range and it was delivered direct to my door, with no queuing or faff of any kind. The box is packed with brilliant locally produced food from independent producers. The meat is from my local butchers, the bread is from a fantastic local baker and fresh fish from the fishmongers. The fruit and veg are fresh from the market each day and you can even stock up your store cupboard. 

My Creamline box was brilliant and contained pretty much everything I needed to make this delicious gingerbread trifle. It’s just the thing if you want to shop local, but don’t really have the time to visit all your local shops, or if you just can’t carry all your shopping home. It’s also a boon at Christmas, saving you slogging around a supermarket, or queuing up for ages in the cold outside the local independent shops you love best, who are all part of this scheme anyway!

Gingerbread Trifle

Ingredients:
4 Christmas Morning Muffins, or Jamaican ginger cake
Gingerbread syrup, approx 50mls
2 pints of custard, cooled
500mls Jersey double cream
Half a packet of ginger nuts, crushed
Some gingerbread men to decorate
Optional – a drop of rum, spiced is nice!

How to make your gingerbread trifle:

This is quite quick to make once you have everything assembled in front of you. So before you begin, make you custard an chill it thoroughly, whip your cream and crush your ginger nuts. Find a nice trifle dish or glass bowl and roll your sleeves up.

Take your Christmas Morning Muffins out of their wrappers and cut into three equally thick slices. You’ll need two muffins for each layer. If you can’t get hold of Christmas Morning Muffins, then a good substitute is slices of Jamaican ginger cake. Arrange them in the bottom of the dish and drizzle approximately 25mls of the gingerbread syrup. If you’re also using rum, now is the time to drizzle over some of that too!

Spoon over half of your cooled custard and smooth the surface. Give the bowl a gentle shake so it can fall into the gaps between the cake layer. Next, carefully spoon over half of the whipped cream and smooth that layer out too.

Next take about 4 biscuits worth of crushed ginger nuts and sprinkle them evenly over the top of the cream. It’s now time to repeat the process.

Lay another layer of Christmas muffins or ginger cake and drizzle over the with remaining gingerbread syrup and a bit of rum if you’re using that. Then spoon over the remaining custard, then the cream and make sure your top cream layer is nice and even. Sprinkle over some more crushed gingernut biscuits and then decorate with your little gingerbread men. I used three and propped them up together on the top. Feel free to let your imagination and creativity run wild at this point!

I left my gingerbread trifle to sit in the fridge for a few hours before serving and by gosh, it was delicious. If you really love ginger, you might want to be a bit more generous with the syrup, but it’s a great trifle. It’s rich, its delicious and it’s a real crowd pleaser! Everything you need this Christmas!

Big thanks to Creamline Diaries who saved me having to carry a heap of shopping home, for supporting local businesses and for having an excellent selection of great quality, locally produced food.