Writer’s Note: For the unbelievably sloth-like ones and/or those that really like cake.
Difficulty: Dead Easy
- So Valentine’s Day just passed by a few days back, and you spent it alone as always. You just wanted to wallow in your lonely sorrows at home with a big bowl of ice-cream while watching multiple re-runs of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Sadly though, the fact that it was a Tuesday meant that you didn’t get to execute that plan in it’s full glory. Tonight’s the night.
- Valentine’s Day just passed a few days back, but exams/work was in the way, causing you to postpone it to today. As always, you forgot, but you want to make your partner feel loved and still throw together something that would look like a decent amount of effort was spent doing this. We’ve got the perfect thing.
Even though it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to be in one of those scenarios, this Cheater’s Strawberry Trifle is still going to come in handy when you wish to impress your mates/partner’s parents when you tell them you actually have dessert, and it’s not just sliced fruit! The amount of time needed for this is unbelievable.
*Cheater’s mode is purely for human sloths. If you feel up to putting in a little more effort for making a marked difference in taste, adopt the non-cheater’s style!*
Ingredients (Cheater’s style)
One Sara Lee All Butter All Purpose Pound Cake
About 300g of Strawberries (Fresh if possible)
A can of Whipped Cream
Improvements on Ingredients (Non-cheater style)
A bottle of Heavy Cream (Substitution for the Whipped Cream)
Utensils
Food Processor/Blender(Be careful with the blender or you might just end up with juice)
Chopping Board
Knife
Simple ingredients that can be bought at any local supermarket!
Pretty darn beautiful for three dollars!
Most people will immediately agree that home-cooked food will always taste better than packaged food, and this is true for most scenarios, except for a few tiny exceptions. One such exception would be Sara Lee’s All Butter All Purpose Pound Cake, of which I can pretty confidently say, will be very likely to taste as good, if not better than your own pound cake. As an additional bonus, need I emphasize on how convenient it is to just pick up a pound cake from the frozen section?
Dead Simple Step #1: Slice the Pound cake.
Dead Simple Step #2: Cut the slices into cubes
After what shouldn’t be more than a minute or two of cutting, you have one component in a bowl, and another that’s already been waiting in the can for you. All that’s left is the macerated strawberries.
Don’t run just because macerated sounds like a big ‘chefy’ word! Macerated strawberries would simply be an acid/sugar that is added to the strawberries to extract the best flavour from the strawberries, of which in this case, the icing sugar will be added to the strawberries.
Dead Simple Step #3: Blitz the strawberries, whilst constantly adding icing sugar till taste is right.
If possible, try your best to utilise fresh strawberries, as the frozen ones tend to be a tad unripe since it’s flash frozen almost immediately after being picked, and hence will be more sour, and needing of more sugar. Just like seasoning a dish with salt and pepper, this step requires your personal take on how much sugar to be added. Simply keep adding the sugar, tasting a little every time you do, and stopping when it’s sweet enough to satisfy yourself or your guests!
Be careful if you do use the blender, as you wish to end up with a thick strawberry juice which still has some small and big chunks of strawberries, and not just blended strawberry juice. A precaution would be to slice some strawberries into small and larger chunks, and chucking the rest into the blender, such that you’d have both the juice and the chunks without fail!
Dead Simple Step #4: Assemble your Cheater's Strawberry Trifle
Non-cheater’s mode
*If you are adopting this style, simply take your heavy cream and pour it into a bowl. Now take your whisk(handheld or electric), put it in the bowl, and place the entire bowl with the cream and whisk, in the fridge for about 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, just whisk away at the cream whilst adding icing sugar to it, tasting it to ensure how much sugar is needed. Once the taste is right, just whisk till the desired consistency is achieved, and there you have it; homemade whipped cream. Taste it and you’ll realise the difference between homemade whipped cream and the commercial canned whipped cream.*
All you have to do now, would be to assemble multiple layers in whatever order you wish to, in order to complete your trifle! If you have no particular violent objection, I’d say an equal proportion of cake cubes, cream and strawberries would be fine!
When finally assembled, it should look and taste a considerable amount better than sliced fruit.
I like whipped cream a lot, so I tend to spray some out whenever given a possible reason to.
You can serve it in a huge bowl like I did, or you could always just take small cups and assemble individual ones for each person, perhaps with different amounts of the three elements for every select individual.
Classified as a legitimate dessert, you’ll be sure to light up the eyes of everyone at the dining table with the magical words, “There’s dessert!” Dig in, and you’ll be amazed at how such a simplistic dessert will be able to wow everyone at the table.
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