No.78 Blackberry and White Chocolate Trifle

This is an elegant looking desert with deep purple jelly under a white chocolate spiked custard. The flavour of the blackberries are balanced with the taste of white chocolate in the custard and the nip of brandy in the trifle sponges. This does take time to make but you get the taste more to your liking than having that artificial tasting fruit cocktail from school dinners.

After much experimenting a ratio of one sheet of leaf gelatine should be used for 100ml of fruit juice. I make the blackberry juice using frozen blackberries and that works well to get the vibrant purple liquid. If blackberries are in season use these for decorating. Idealy if you have wild blackberries – “brambles” – gather these up and freeze them for use. Just remember the wilder ones are sharper in taste and will need more sugar to temper.

Serves:6-8

Time: Overnight

350g of frozen blackberries

5-6 Gelatine Sheets

100g of sponge fingers

150g of white sugar

300ml of water

25-50ml of brandy

500ml of custard

75g of white chocolate

300ml of double cream

100g of Blackberries (can be frozen)

Hazelnuts to decorate

Night before

1. Defrost the frozen blackberries and blend in a blender or food processor with 100ml of water. Sieve the mixture to separate the juice.
2. Make a sugar syrup by heating 150ml of water and adding 150g of sugar. Stir until dissolved. Leave to cool.
3. Add the sugar syrup to the blackberry juice to taste.
4. In a large glass bowl, or individual glasses, assemble the sponge fingers and some of the blackberries. Keep some blackberries for decoration.
5. Add your desired amount of brandy and sugar syrup to soak the sponge fingers.
6. Measure how much blackberry juice you have.  Take 1 sheet of gelatine per 100ml of blackberry juice and soak the gelatine in cold water for 5 minutes. In a pan add 50ml of water and add the soaked gelatine leaves.  Heat and whisk until smooth and the gelatine has dissolved.
7. Turn of the heat and add the blackberry juice and whisk. Pour over the sponge fingers. Chill overnight.

On the day

1. Heat 100ml of custard and add 50 grams of white chocolate. Stir until evenly combined.
2. In another bowl add the white chocolate custard together with the remaining custard and mix well.  Leave to cool and poor over the jelly.
3. Whip the cream and dollop over the custard.
4. Decorate with hazelnuts, the remaining blackberries and grate chocolate over the cream.
5. Serve.