What at first sounds like a dessert a child would invent – some sponge fingers, lots of jelly or jam with custard poured all over it – is in fact one of the UK’s most underrated sweets. Trifle, along with lava lamps, flares and prawn cocktail, may be the most retro thing ever, but when it’s done right it really is delicious. The trick is to stop the sponge at the bottom getting too soggy, ensuring the jelly or jam has just the right amount of sweetness and that your custard has plenty of vanilla flavour and is thick enough to create a stable layer on which you can pipe cream, scatter nuts or dust with icing sugar.
Any good chef should know how to balance the different aspects of a trifle. Of course, many of them will play around with flavours, add their own little spin or turn the trifle completely on its head and produce something totally new. Here are five of our favourites, from some of the best chefs in the UK.
