Caramel Apple Trifle

Since returning from holiday I've been frantically trying to catch up with everything and today I managed to get around to making something for week 3 of the Great Bloggers Bake Off. We have a tree full of apples in our garden that are starting to fall so we got picking a few to use in a trifle.

I have no idea what variety they are but I know they're eating apples and they can be a little sharp and make great pies as they hold their shape when cooked.

I've never made a trifle with apples before but thought that combined with caramel it would make a nice change to my usual chocolate orange trifle that uses ready made swiss roll and instant custard. After watching GBBO last night I knew that I needed to up my game for the challenge and ready made custard and sponge fingers wasn't going to cut it with the judges (obviously because I'm one of the judges it doesn't really matter as I can't actually enter the challenge but need to show willing you see).

I found a recipe for sponge fingers here and they were really simple to make. They were quite flat once baked which may have been due to rushing and not beating the egg yolks enough - but once they were in the trifle they worked really well and weren't dry or too cakey at all.

I used a no cornflour recipe for the custard from my new Mrs Beeton cookbook which has recipes for both 'everyday' custard using cornflour and milk or 'special' custard with double cream and no cornflour.

My layers weren't too well defined but I blame the shape of the bowl rather than the slackness of my custard - it was thicker than some of the custard offerings on GBBO and I can honestly say that the custard was all mine and definitely not Howard's.

The tartness of the apples worked really well with the sweet custard and the addition of the cinnamon made it taste very apple pie like. Everyone loved the custard and it tasted just like real dairy ice cream so I may have to be making more of it to churn in the ice cream maker. The only problem was the height of the bowl meaning that it wouldn't fit into the fridge and all had to be eaten...such a shame!

Caramel Apple Trifle
printable recipe

Apple layer

Approx 250ml Caramel sauce - I used a recipe found here (reserve 50ml for the cream)

600g Apples, peeled & cored & cut into wedges (& placed in cold water with a squeeze of lemon)

2 tbsp Maple Syrup

1 tsp Cinnamon

Custard

300ml Double Cream

50g Caster sugar

1 vanilla pod

5 Egg yolks

Sponge fingers

300ml Double Cream

• Drain the apples and place in a shallow pan with approx 1/3 of the caramel sauce and cinnamon
• Bring the sauce up the the boil, place a lid on and simmer for approx 15 minutes until the apples are tender but still holding their shape
• Stir in the Maple syrup and remaining caramel sauce, stir and allow to cool fully

• Make the custard by adding half of the sugar and vanilla pod to the cream
• Bring to the boil, remove from heat and leave to infuse whilst preparing the egg yolks
• Beat the egg yolks with the remaining sugar in a glass bowl until thick and creamy
• Bring a small pan  half filled with water to the boil
• Remove the Vanilla pod from the cream & split it and add the seeds to the cream (you can wash & dry the pod afterwards and add to a jar of caster sugar to infuse with the vanilla flavour)
• Put the cream back on the heat and bring to the boil
• As soon as the cream comes to the boil whisk it into the egg yolks and place the bowl over the pan of boiling water (making sure that the water does not touch the bowl)
• Keep whisking until the custard thickens - it may take a while but heating too quickly may cause the custard to curdle
• Cool the custard completely 
• Whisk the remaining cream with a hand whisk until just thickened
• Stir in the reserved caramel sauce and beat again
• Now to start layering up as you want, I went with 2 layers of sponge, apple and custard but you could just have 1 layer of each if using a wider bowl, ending with the caramel cream on top and a sprinkling on cinnamon 

if you fancy giving the Great Bloggers Bake Off a go you can read more about it by clicking the badge below or on Jenny's blog. If you join in with a minimum of 6 of the challenges you could be in with a chance of winning some great prizes at the end.