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Delicious Desserts
A "Dessert" is a meal course that usually comes after dinner.
Most often Dessert foods are of sweet food but can also be of a
strongly flavored food, such as cheese, like cheese cake. The
world dessert comes from the Old French word "desservir",...
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A Christmas with Trifle
This Christmas, I'm going to make trifle for desert. After all,
what is Christmas without trifle? I'm sure, even the pickiest of
diners who shun cross-cultural eating would find a soft culinary
spot for trifle in their hearts and palates if they could hear
Charles Dickens vouch for it.
I first tasted trifle, a couple of decades ago, not in England
where it has originated but in Long Island, NY, in a restaurant
called Steak Pub of Fort Salonga, where every Friday evening, we
used to go for dinner, especially for trifle and the free house
wine. Our friends and neighbors who dined there for the same
reason would drop by our table to discuss the kind of trifle the
chef was surprising us with that the evening. To us, trifle and
food was all about sharing, same as the neighborly gossip. In
that restaurant, desert was picked by the customer from the
desert bar, giving him or her an educational access to the
desert chef.
Trifle, as a word, is the offspring of the French word trufle,
meaning something trite or whimsical. As a desert, trifle put
down its roots inside the 1700s cooking arts when biscuits,
liquor, and custard were combined. In the United States, this
new delicacy found great popularity with the plantation owners
in the south.
Through the last three centuries, trifle has soaked its way
into literature through the writers' tongues, after Oliver
Wendell Holmes called it, "That most wonderful object of
domestic art," Dickens put it among his 'glorious food's, and J.
K. Rowling mentioned it in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's
Stone.
Trifle not only delights the palate but also enchants
the
senses, especially the eyes, for it is an artistic desert
arranged in layers, placed in trifle bowl for effect, and
refrigerated for several hours before serving. A trifle bowl is
a very large, see-through glass bowl from which every delicious
layer of trifle beckons its admirers.
Trifle's layers are: a sponge cake or even ladies fingers soaked
in brandy, whisky, or sherry; jelly or jam; custard; fresh fruit
or berries in season; and huge mounds of whipped cream topped
with cherries, sprinkles, or nuts. Although whatever composes
the trifle can be made from a mix or sometimes leftover cakes
and puddings can be used, a true-to -form trifle gourmet would
like his trifle to be made from scratch. After the trifle's
layers are arranged, refrigeration for several hours is
essential for the flavors to penetrate into each layer.
There are quite a few kinds of trifle: chocolate trifle,
coronation trifle, quick trifle, Black Forest trifle, and the
good old-fashioned trifle English mums make as an alternate
Christmas desert to the plum pudding. My trifle shall not take
the celebrity route, neither, tastewise, will it come close to
Emeril's deserts or Creole Christmas Trifle, but it will make an
impact on Santa when he comes down our chimney. I'm sure of that.
About the author:
Joy Cagil is an author on a site for Creative Writing
(http://www.Writing.Com/) Her training is in foreign languages
and linguistics. Her culinary skills are self-taught. Her
portfolio can be found at
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