Cocktail Glass Christmas Trifles with Splenda®

There's less than 3 weeks left now until the big day, and I'm feeling rather pleased with my organisational skills at the moment. The tree is up and most of the presents have been bought and wrapped. Inspired by Nigella and her year round twinkly lights, I've also put some fairy lights up in the kitchen this year, however, in my enthusiasm, I appear to have achieved the look of Santa's Grotto rather than Nigella's cosy kitchen. The husband is none too chuffed by my efforts to be super festive as I'm yet to introduce smart plugs into the kitchen, and there are a grand total of 7 sockets to turn off at the end of the night!

I've not yet dug out my spreadsheet for the Christmas food, but that part of the planning will hopefully get underway over the weekend. I'm not catering for as many guests on the big day this year but I'm sure that won't stop me making plenty of desserts, resulting in me inadvertently consuming far too many calories.

According to Consultant Dietician Helen Bond, on average people gain  between 1 and 5lbs over Christmas, and I've definitely been closer to the latter in previous years. This year I'm aiming for zero weight gain, so I need to be a little bit clever, as I don't want to miss out on all of the treats.

Reducing your sugar intake over Christmas can be a little tricky but by substituting sugar in desserts and drinks with Splenda® granulated low calorie sweetener means that you can still enjoy a few sweet treats, without the extra calories. As Splenda® is made with sucralose it's heat stable up to 232 degrees C, making it an ideal replacement for sugar in cakes and bakes.

There are lots of recipes and ideas on the Splenda website, including Chocolate Swirl Cheesecake, Mince Pies, Mulled Wine Jelly and Christmas Trifle, which would all be perfect for Christmas entertaining.

I decided to make the Christmas Trifle, and instead of making one large trifle I made smaller ones in cocktail glasses. Making individual desserts is a not only a more attractive way to serve trifle, it's also a great way to ensure that you don't eat one spoonful too many!

My version of the trifle also includes Amaretto in place of Sherry, Madeira or Masala, as I absolutely love Amaretto, and the almond flavour goes really well with the spiced plums. I must admit that despite making trifle every Christmas I can take it or leave it really. I certainly don't like trifle with jelly in, and many trifles are really heavy, however this version, without the layer of cream on top, was much lighter, and the spiced plum layer was quite tart and paired well with the sweet custard.

Helen Bond’s top 10 tips for negotiating festive feasting; from daily treats to New Year’s toast.

Top Tips:

1.     Always start the day with a healthy breakfast. It’s easy to miss this important meal, or give in and indulge in fatty croissants to ease that Christmas party hangover. But eating a good breakfast will help kick-start your metabolism and keep you feeling full, making it easier to ignore the inevitable chocolates lying around.  

2.     Get creative with your advent calendar. Even big kids love opening those little advent calendar doors – but, enjoying 25 days of chocolaty goodness will do your waistline no favours! A little chocolate Xmas character provides around 26 kcals, 1.5g fat, 2.8g sugar - even more if they are truffle or alcoholic filled – that’s an extra 650 kcals, 37.5g fat and 70g sugar over 25 days. Why not get creative with your countdown to Christmas, so you’ve got a daily treat, without the daily guilt. 

3.     Love seasonal fruit and veg. With the abundance of festive food, it can be easy to forget the basics of eating healthily and achieving the (at least) 5-a-day recommendation. I like to pile the veg on my plate first, rather than last.

4.     Make time for exercise. However well you plan, life is going to get hectic over the festive period, so schedule your 2.5 hours of moderate intensity exercise into your week now. Exercise is also a fabulous stress buster, as it releases endorphins, making you feel happier and calmer. 

5.     Don’t skip meals. If you’re going to the office party straight after work, or you’ve got a dinner date with friends, don’t ditch lunch for fear of overdoing your daily calorie intake. You’ll be famished and hungry people tend to make bad food decisions.

6.     Try not to burn the candle at both ends. Burning the festive candle at both ends, with parties during the week and weekend hosting duties, can also affect your waistline. Too little sleep can reduce the level of the appetite-controlling hormone leptin and increase the hormone ghrelin, telling the brain you need to eat – and not always the right healthy food choices.

7.     Rethink your tea breaks. Cut cutting down on the ‘white stuff’ is a tall order, especially around Christmas. It appears in so many of the traditional festive favourites, that it’s near impossible to keep track of how much you’re eating.  An easy win is to rethink your tea breaks; instead of adding sugar to your tea, swap to a low-calorie sweetener, like SPLENDA®. If you drink four cups of tea a day with two teaspoons (8g) of sugar in each cup - that adds up to 128 kcals. Your sweet tea also tots up to nearly one 1kg bag of sugar over the 25 days of December and 3,200 kcals! You, and your Xmas shopping could be a whole lot lighter for a simple sweet swap!

8.     Treat sweets as treats. The constant supply of treats from guests and salty savoury snacks at work can be too tempting to avoid. Keep healthier seasonal snacks, like clementines, to hand; a medium clementine has just 25 kcals and will provide you 31% of your daily needs for immune boosting vitamin C and 1g of gut healthy fibre.

9.     Wise-up to the buffet. Faced with a buffet, resist the temptation to start filling your plate at one end of the table and continuing to add to it until you reach the other. Before you pick up the plate (and always take the smallest one!), pause for a moment and then prioritise healthy choices; smoked salmon, slices of lean ham and vegetable crudités. Now, step away.

10.  Keep in mind portion size. Most of us are over-generous with serving sizes at Christmas and it’s a fact that the bigger your tableware, the more you’ll fill it. Research shows that simply downsizing from a 12 to 10-inch plate could help you eat roughly 22% fewer calories, and you’ll not feel like you are missing out. 

Visit www.splenda.co.uk/recipes for more delicious recipe inspiration & baking tips.

Commissioned post for SPLENDA®

Cranberry, Clementine & Cointreau Trifle

Christmas is a time for eating and drinking and getting together with family, for more eating and drinking and lots of game playing. Last year the fun family must have game was Pie Face, but I never managed to get my hands on one in time, so this year I've already got my hands on the game that every family will be playing this Christmas - Speak Out. If you haven't seen it you really must watch some videos on You Tube, it's hilarious! 

Back to the food and drink. Every Christmas, for as long as I can remember, my mum has made a trifle. It's nothing posh and it's nothing glamorous, but she whips it up in no time and it tastes great, and there's no jelly or sherry (haven't touched that stuff since I was 14, but that's another story) in sight. 

When I was challenged by Bonne Maman to make a festive dessert that makes use of their Madeleines I immediately thought of a trifle. A boozy trifle. A boozy trifle that doesn't contain either sherry or jelly. There are certain ingredients, flavours and smells that we associate with Christmas, and two of those are cranberry and clementine, and I've included both of those in this trifle, as they go really well together.

You can make the cranberry jam in advance, or if you don't want to go to that trouble it can be replaced by one of the many delicious conserves that Bonne Maman make - Berries & Cherries Conserve would make a great alternative. If you're not using the home made cranberry jam then you may need to add some additional liquid to the Madeleines, as they really do hold the liquid well. There are a few steps to this recipe but as I said, the jam can be made in advance, as can the sugared cranberries. It's then a case of layering the trifle up. If you want to prepare it earlier in the day and refrigerate then I would recommend adding the cream on just before serving.

Cranberry, Clementine & Cointreau Trifle - makes a 17cm trifle

for the cranberry jam
150g fresh cranberries
300g granulated sugar
cinnamon stick
zest & juice of 2 clementines (you can replace some or all of this with Cointreau)

• place all the ingredients into a saucepan
• bring to a slow boil, making sure that the sugar dissolves
• turn down the heat to a simmer, and simmer for 10 minutes
• leave to cool fully before removing the cinnamon stick & using in the trifle

for the sugared cranberries
handful of fresh cranberries
equal parts granulated sugar & water (I use 1/2 measuring cup of each)
extra sugar for rolling in

• place the sugar and water in a pan and stir to dissolve the sugar
• bring to the boil and simmer for 4 minutes
• drop the cranberries into the syrup and remove with a slotted spoon onto a cake rack
• leave for approx 30 mins 
• after 30 mins drop the cranberries into the syrup again & remove (dripping excess syrup into the pan) with a slotted spoon into the sugar
• roll in the sugar to coat with crystals
• allow to dry for at least 30 mins before using

for the trifle
4-5 Bonne Maman Madeleines, cut into cubes
3 tbsp Cointreau (or replace with orange juice)
cooled Cranberry jam
500g fresh custard (either home made or store bought would work)
250g mascarpone
grated zest of 1 clementine
250ml double cream
1/2 tsp cinnamon

• place the Madeleine cubes into your trifle dish 
• spoon 2tbsp of Cointreau or orange juice over the sponge 
• spoon your cooled jam into the trifle dish - you may not need all of it
• place in the fridge for an hour before adding the rest of the ingredients
• whisk the custard together with the mascarpone, clementine zest & 1tbsp Cointreau (or orange juice) until smooth
• spoon into the trifle dish and smooth the top over
• whisk the cream with the cinnamon until soft peaks form (you could add some Cointreau here too for an extra boozy trifle)
• pipe or spoon on top of the custard layer
• top with sugared cranberries and clementine zest before serving

Alternative ways to use Bonne Maman Madeleines :

Cute Madeleine Reindeer by Here Come the Girls
Alternative Christmas Pudding by Mummy Mishaps

recipe commissioned for Bonne Maman

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.

My Mum's Chocolate Orange Trifle

If you're not already bloated with all the food and drink that you've over indulged in over Christmas then this one is set to finish you off once and for all. It does make a nice change from chocolate bars and Christmas cake though, and the addition of oranges helps towards your 5 a day!


I don't like traditional trifle, the sort made with jelly and tinned mixed fruit but this is a tasty, quick, cheap and cheerful alternative. It's the trifle that my Mum usually makes and has been doing so for as long as I can remember, and it always goes down well with all the chocolate loving family members. I intended to make it a few days ago but never got around to it & needed to make it now as the swiss roll was just about out of date.


You will need :


Chocolate swiss roll (works best with chocolate filling)
Can of mandarin segments
Chocolate blancmange (or pack of instant custard & 2 tbsp cocoa powder)
Double / whipping cream
Cadbury Flake (or whatever else you can find in the kids selection boxes)

• Slice the swiss roll up and lay in the bottom of a trifle dish - fill the gaps with off cuts
• Spoon the oranges over the swiss roll and 3-4 tbsp of the juice

• Make up the blancmange as per the directions on the pack. If (like me) you are using custard then mix the powder with the cocoa powder & mix with the boiling water (as per directions on pack) - or to make it creamier use boiling milk. You can also melt dark chocolate into the custard instead of cocoa powder.
• Pour the chocolate mix over the cake/oranges & allow to cool

• Once cool cover with whipped cream & top with crushed flake.