Mango Trifle from the ground up

One of our December holiday "traditions" is to make trifle. We don't do it every year, and sometimes we make trifle outside of December, which is why I've put "tradition" in bunny quotes. But, we've had trifle a few times at Christmas, and we like it a lot.

This year we had an idea (okay, we saw it on Better Homes & Gardens) to put mango into trifle. We've got mangoes up the wazoo, so I decided to create a tropical trifle for Christmas this year. And I had an opportunity to pre-test it when I was asked to bring dessert to dinner at a friend's house.

Only trouble is, it was in the mid-high-30s, Celsius - and humid - the week I was due to make the pre-test trifle. So I didn't want to put on the oven to make a cake for the bottom layer. And since vegan cakes aren't so easy to find in Townsville, I couldn't take the storebought cheater's way out. I contemplated, and considered, and was finally struck with inspiration - pancakes! They are basically just like cake, and don't involve the oven. Since I cut up the cake layer of the trifle into chunks anyways, why not use pancakes?

So here is how we constructed our tropical trifle, from the bottom layer right up to the top.

Ground floor. Make a batch of pancakes. This can be done ahead of time. I needed 8 pancakes which were about 5 or 6 inches in diameter. When you're ready to build the trifle, sandwich two pancakes together with jam (mango, obviously). Cut them into squares and put in the bottom of the trifle bowl (we use a deep-ish glass baking dish). Sprinkle with a weensy bit (or a lot) of cointreau, or use some other kind of booze.

First floor. Cut the cheeks off of two mangoes, and cut them into chunks. Put these on top of the pancakes.  Give the trifle bowl a good shake to settle everything in together.

Second floor. Now, make some jelly. If you have an easy source of tropical-ish flavoured vegan jelly, lucky you! We don't. So I made some pineapple jelly using a tin of crushed pineapple and about 2 tablespoons of agar flakes. Soak the agar in just enough water to cover, and meanwhile boil the pineapple, juice & all, for 3 or 4 minutes. Tip in the agar and keep it boiling for another 5 or 10 minutes, until the agar fully dissolves. You can check whether the agar has worked by dipping a spoon into the pan and then sticking it in the fridge for a minute. It should set up obviously - if not, add more agar (I had to, I think because the acidity of the pineapple).  Pour this over the mango, and again give it a good shake to let it settle into the cracks.

The tinned pineapple resulted in a layer of juice-jelly settling around the pancakes, and a layer of fruit-jelly sitting on top of the mango. I kinda dug it this way, but Andy's mum & grandma & aunties all set the jelly in a separate pan, break it up with a fork, and then put it on top of the fruit, so I will do it this way for the Christmas trifle.

Third floor. When the jelly has cooled a touch, add a sliced banana. Or whatever other tropical fruit you have and like.

Penthouse. Make custard. I used the recipe from Joy of Vegan Baking, with a few alterations. In a jug, mix 1/3 c. raw sugar, 2 T. plain flour, and 4 T. corn flour (corn starch). Open a 400ml can of coconut cream (sold as, I believe, coconut milk in the US - cream of coconut is something else involving sweet). Whisk about 1/4 c. of the coconut cream into the sugar until smooooooth. Heat up the rest of the tin of coconut cream, plus a smidge of water to rinse the can, over medium-low heat. When it's at a simmer, tip about 1/2 c. of the hot coconut milk into the jug, and whisk again until smooth, then tip all of that into the pan. Cook and whisk constantly until it's nice and thick, and then turn off the heat and whisk hard for 30 seconds. Then pour, gently (don't want to mess up those carefully placed bananas!) onto the top of the trifle.  Smooth the top, cover with cling wrap, and chill.

Admire the layers. Add toasted coconut on top, if you can be bothered. Or don't. Consume.

Birthday Trifle

Andy had a birthday recently, so despite his comments that he didn't want anything, gifts or food or anything, I got him a present anyways.  I also wanted to make some kind of cake-like dessert, because what's a birthday if not a great excuse for cake?  However, we were only a few days away from a long weekend to Eden (where we've just returned from, so more on that soon), so we were trying to empty out the pantry and avoid grocery shopping.

This made birthday dessert-making tricky, because we were out of cocoa, out of chocolate, out of pastry, out of frozen fruit, and a few other things.  But I did notice a box of vegan jelly we bought at the Asian grocery store a few months ago.  I was going to make some jelly.  Then I though -- why not make trifle?

I settled on a simple but hopefully delicious vanilla bean-centric trifle to go along with our strawberry flavoured jelly.  First, I made a vanilla bean cake, turning the recipe for Vanilla Bean Cupcakes from Vegan Bake Sale into a big cake.  This didn't work all that well; for some reason the cake took twice as long as I expected to bake through.  And it had a few funny bubbles.  However, it was absolutely freaking delicious.

I make trifle by splitting my cake in half and spreading it with jam, before sandwiching it back together and cutting it into chunks.  Those chunks go into the trifle dish (in our house, a deep-ish pan) and jelly gets poured over the top to set amidst the cake chunks.  This goes against Andy's family's method, which involves setting the jelly separately, then breaking it up and putting on top of the cake that way.  But luckily he's flexible, and willing to try new things.

Once the jelly sets, some vegan custard goes over the top.

Then I sprinkled on some toasted coconut.

I was struggling to come up with a whipped cream alternative, based on what we had in the house.  But then it hit me - vanilla bean + coconut cream = Andy's favourite ice cream ever.  Since we had both of those things, I made some ice cream, which we scooped on top of each serve of trifle.

The result was really, very yummy.  The only thing this needed was a layer of real fruit.  But for a quickly thrown together, using what we had on hand kind of dessert, I was pretty impressed with myself.

Vegan Christmas

It seems appropriate to end 2011 with a summary of our Christmas, because if I leave it until 2012 I will feel slack (even though I'm still posting about our travels which happened in OCTOBER, but whatevs).

Our Christmas promised little in the way of either excitement or decoration - it was just Andy and I hanging out in Townsville, and we had a stack of novels to keep us company, and the limit of my cheer was this little display on the table (which is a major step up from most years).

For dinner, which Andy and I have on Christmas eve, we decided to be modest so we could save room for dessert.

There was a yuba-wrapped seitan roast, made as per last year's recipe, except this year stuffed with a fig & pecan stuffing, which was wonderful. There were some oven-roasted potatoes, which Andy declared "tates awesome" (get it?). There was a crunchy noodle cole slaw - you know the recipe on the back of the crunchy noodle pack, with a sesame-soy dressing. And there was cranberry jelly, from a jar, which I resisted buying because the homemade version is much better, but it was on special and Andy can't resist a bargain.

As per our plan, there was room for dessert, in the form of tropical trifle, but which I forgot to photograph. Here is a photo of my first go, but the Christmas version was made in a rectangular baking dish - partially because that's how Andy's mum does it, but mainly because our usual trifle bowl was under a friend's house and we'd been too slack to pick it up.

On Christmas morning, I woke to put on some bread - cranberry fig bread, a dried fruit combination which, to me, seems more festive than dried mixed fruit, which we always have on hand. I found a recipe for vegan panettone, but decided to just make it like a regular loaf in the breadmaker. Only, when the beep signalled our bread finished, the result was flat in the pan (despite loads of yeast), it was reluctant to come out, and when it did, it collapsed into a heap:

The reason was because it was still pretty doughy in the centre. We ate it anyways, in chunks, though my lofty goal of having cranberry fig french toast on Boxing Day was dashed.

The rest of Christmas Breakfast centred on mango mimosas - champagne with melty mango sorbet.

And on food, too. Hash browns with smoked cheddar sheese and (vegan) bacon bits. More cranberry jelly. Creamy breakfast mushrooms. And see the chunk of bread? Also, Vegan Dad's breakfast sausages. I made a half batch of this lightly sweet but mainly savoury recipe, but made the mistake of steaming them wrapped in baking paper, rather than foil - to me aluminium foil seems wasteful, and the whole thing about aluminium and health... But the baking paper wasn't tight enough so they were a bit flat, and not as dense as they should have been. But still good.

The rest of the day involved cocktails, potato chips, more trifle, novels, It's a Wonderful Life, and leftovers.

Boxing Day saw Nacho throwing up all day, and not eating. One of the throw-ups involved a 20cm piece of shoe lace. She perked up a bit after that, but then got sick again, so when she was still sick on Tuesday morning, we took her to the Emergency Vet - because it was the Christmas Day public holiday, you see, and the regular vet was closed.

While we worried about Nacho, we occupied ourselves by making some mango-beetroot spring rolls. I originally planned to have these for Christmas, but the Christmas Day public holiday is close enough, no?  In rice paper I put 20cent sweet chilli tofu...

And mango...

And a big pile of grated beetroot, grated carrot, and rice vermicelli.

Then I rolled them up.

And after we heard that Nacho's surgery went just fine, and they removed a 60cm piece of shoe lace from her guts, we ate our spring rolls for dinner.

Nacho came home the next night, full of her last dose of pain meds, and with a shaved arm where the IV had been, which I think makes it look like she has her sleeve rolled up.

And with a shaved pink belly.

She's done a lot of laying around since Wednesday night, which is good, but she's also back to eating lots, licking herself, and purring adorably.

 Happy end of 2011 to everyone, and see you next year!

Belated Birthday

Andy's birthday was, oh, more than two months ago! And we did celebrate on the day. But I was just looking through some photos and realised I never blogged about it. And it was a yummy, if junky, celebration, so it deserves to be blogged about.

For dinner, I convinced Andy that we should have a junky tater tot casserole. I even had to walk up to the grocery store to get tater tots at 6pm, that's how committed I was to the idea. Here's how you do it: bake the tater tots until they're just about done. Then smother them in tomato sauce, vegan cheese, and vegan bacon bits. Bake a little more.

This is one of those meals that is SO DELICIOUS while you eat it, and then you regret it pretty much straight away. But SO DELICIOUS while you eat it.

Despite our tater tot casserole regret, we soldiered on with dessert, because, birthday cake! Normally, I make Andy a trifle. But his birthday was in the second-last week of classes, and we were both very busy, so although I offered, he requested a self-saucing pudding instead. Which was good, because I think it was really cold that week.

I made individual ramekin-sized puddings, and then we flipped them out into bowls for beautiful, puddingy cake. A weensy bit of ice cream or custard would have been really great, but I'm not complaining!

We probably eat like this about once a year. I promise my next post will be much healthier.

Favourite day: Sunday

I'm pretty sure that Sunday is my favourite day of the week. There is no need to rush--it's okay to laze around drinking tea, making semi-elaborate snacks or meals, and if the laundry gets done then it's been a productive day.

Yesterday was the epitome of a lovely Sunday. We went to the market and spent $25 on four giant bags of produce. Much tea was consumed. I spent a little bit of time playing in the kitchen. The garden was tended, the laundry was hung. To fuel this lazy puttering, I decided to use two vegan sausages we had in the fridge.

Andy had a sausage sandwich--thinly sliced sausage fried up and served with spinach, tomato and beetroot, smothered in mayo, mustard and tomato sauce.

I wanted something more traditional so I cut my sausage in half before frying, then served it with veggies and sauce down the middle of the bread.

A bit later in the afternoon we packed up a picnic and headed off to the city for Shakespeare in the Park. We got to the Queen's Gardens a bit early so walked around. In this botanical park, they have a lot of birds in cages--ducks, turkeys, peacocks, gallahs, and cockatoos. It's really sad to see birds unable to do their natural bird thing. But I bonded with this guy for a few minutes.


This year's performance was Henry V, which was kind of confusing for a philistine like me but was nonetheless entertaining. It was light hearted, and the ambience in the park was really great. We sat in bleachers, looking down at the stage--or rather, the leaf-covered ground, where the actors performed. Although the Queen's Gardens is in the most urban suburb of Townsville, nature carried on with no regard for the theatre. Leaves, mangoes and bat shit dropped from the trees overhead. A few lines were muffled thanks to squealing bats, chirping geckos, and the odd hoon on the nearby streets. At one point an owl swooped over the crowd with a dead rat in his claws.

During the interval, we went out on the grass to eat our food. We brought crackers with fava bean hummus, and mushroom-spinach triangles. These were perfect picnic food--no forks required. They were very tasty cold and they travelled well (even though I pretty much suck at encasing things in pastry). To drink: watermelon-beetroot-carrot-ginger juice.

For dessert, a chocolate-raspberry trifle, which didn't photo well thanks to the rapidly setting sun. Chocolate cake sprinkled with scotch, raspberry jelly and thick custard combined into a really yummy dessert that I will definitely make again.It was a perfect Townsville Sunday.

Christmas weekend

Last Christmas, Andy adamantly told me that he didn’t want to do anything; that the day was just another day in his opinion. Then on Christmas Eve he was sad that we weren’t doing anything, so we quickly decided on a menu, rushed to the shop for some ingredients, and threw together a nice Christmas Eve dinner.

This year I pre-empted his indecision and planned a bit better. This meant that I was able to make things in advance, so there was much less to do before dinner on Christmas Eve (and even less to do on Christmas Day). But, we still had quite a feast, and a lot of fun, despite our quiet, low-key activities.

The weekend before Christmas, I baked some masala chai cookies, and made some coconut-ginger truffles. Wrapped up on a pretty (second-hand) plate, these were gifts for a few people, but I made sure there were plenty of leftovers for ourselves.

Though we’re not really Christmassy people, while at the public library on the 23^rd I grabbed a free paper reindeer crown, fastened it around a candle and we had out christmas centrepiece.

We started our Christmas feast with some Chilled Zucchini Soup, an Urban Vegan tester recipe. This was a nice, light soup and it was the perfect way to get the meal started on a hot, humid day.

We finished our wine, and then it was time for the main course. Pumpkin seitan (based on Celine’s recipe) with Pecan-Cherry Stuffing (another Urban Vegan tester) was the hearty feature. With it, we had a creamy dill potato salad and a spinach salad.

We were pretty full (especially Andy, who had been eating stuffing all afternoon) but we found a bit of room for a few bites of Trifle, topped it with some Sabayon Sauce, an Urban Vegan tester recipe. It was a sweet, boozy, and yummy end to our Christmas feast.

The next morning we woke up and had a lazy breakfast. We opened a few presents sent up by Andy’s family. Andy’s mum went online to order me some vegan Macadamia Nougat candies and a really great Aussie vegan cookbook called Wild Morsels. Andy got a wind-up head torch which needs no batteries, and some organic ginger and a tea sampler pack his parents picked up on holiday recently. And from Grandma, we got some hand-knitted tea towels.

Then, we packed some leftovers into our cooler bag and hit the road. We headed to Alligator Creek, about 30 minutes south of Townsville. We weren’t the only ones with that idea, but we were able to have a quiet swim away from most of the crowds.

We climbed around on the rocks.

And we sat in some mini-waterfalls for a free spa.

Then we went back to the picnic area for an early-ish lunch of leftovers and watermelon.

We were visited by some curious bush turkeys, and a few nasty march flies.

Then we went for a short hike up the hill to Cockatoo Creek, where we definitely enjoyed sitting in the running water to cool off.

We ate some cookies before walking the two kilometres back to the car and then heading home.

We stopped briefly on our way out of Alligator Creek to buy a bag of Mangoes from this small orchard.

All up, it was a great way to spend Christmas Day. But, luckily for us, Australians celebrate Boxing Day as a public holiday and the timing of the days meant that, this year, we were granted with a four-day weekend (4 and ½, if you count our early knock-off on Christmas Eve.... nearly 10 days if you include the closure of the uni until after New Year’s Day).

To celebrate the public holiday, we lazed around the house reading, sewing, and snacking on leftovers, as one does the day after Christmas. In the evening we went to see the epic new-ish film Australia. I know this has not done well in America, but I highly recommend going to see it. It’s not the most vegan film—the beef industry, horse breeding and riding, and kangaroo shooting all have their place. But, if you can sit through a bit of that, then it’s worth watching for a compelling depiction of Aboriginal-settler relations in the first half of the 20^th century as well as the bombing of Darwin in WWII. If you go see it, or you have already, I’d like to know what your thoughts were on the movie...

The long weekend continued in a similarly lazy fashion. Andy made apple pancakes for breakfast one morning, which I topped with some leftover Sabayon sauce.

We read more, went to uni for a bit, I sewed some more, we ate lots of food, and we bought more mangoes at the market (expect a post soon!). Basically, it was a great, long, summer weekend and I wouldn’t have spent it any differently.