I made an Espresso Martini Trifle for my wife birthday this year. For some reason, she decided she wanted a trifle, something I’d not only never made, but quite possibly never even eaten before. We are on a bit of an espresso martini kick, so that seemed like the perfect flavor.
A trifle is often positioned as a fairly easy no-bake recipe, and it was hard to find a recipe for actually making everything from scratch, so I had to improvise and combine assorted recipes.
So what’s a trifle?
A trifle is a (mostly British/UK) layered dessert. The bottom layer is a coffee “jelly”, which is basically jello but as trifles are British recipes always call it jelly. So what do they call what we call jelly? I have no idea. This is basically just sugar water gelatin and some espresso powder. My wife isn’t big on things with odd consistencies so I was a little worried she wouldn’t like the jelly, but it actually turned out to be one of her favorite parts.
On top of that was a layer of chocolate cake. For the cake layers I just made a nice moist sheet-cake. Something like this, but to be honest I don’t remember what recipe I actually followed. The cake layers are all brushed with a 50/50 mixture of Stoli Vanilla and Mr. Black liqueur. Most recipes for something espresso martini flavored call for Baileys, but we find it cloyingly sweet and prefer Mr. Black for the coffee flavor. The next layer was chocolate custard. A lot of recipes say to buy custard, but of course, I wasn’t about to do that. Trusty Bird’s Custard Powder to the rescue. Then I just repeated the cake layer and another custard layer. Some fresh whipped cream on top finished it off.
Because my wife likes over the top when it comes to her birthday cakes I went with a bunch of gold and silver leaf to decorate, along with some edible shimmer powder, sprinkles, and some fun balloon candles.
It was a big hit, even the parts I wasn’t so sure about, basically the jelly and the custard. I was pretty surprised everyone liked the jelly, it actually turned out to be me that thought it was weird and didn’t like it that much.
I think this is a great bake to try. It really allows you to put differing levels of effort in depending on how much time and motivation you have. You can find recipes where everything is store bought and you basically just assemble and chill, or you can go all out like I did and make every element from scratch.
