[ADVICE] Abbot's Special Abbey Trifle? (amateur cook needs serious help)

[Blazemane]

It tasted alright, for me. Other opinions were varied from "Great!" to "Hmm... I don't know..." I did think that the custard had a strange... afterfeel(?) to it, like it dried my throat out. That must have had something to do with the way I made it.

See, those pictures look right! Thank you for all of the advice. I won't remember everything perfectly, so I should look back to your post whenever I  try it again.

Next up on my list is probably Jess Squirrel's Blackberry and Apple Cake. Well, I don't think her name is actually in the recipe, but, it's hers, anyways.

Romsca, you should try too! If you've got the time, of course.

[Osu]

Weeeeeeell now, I've tried this recipe multiple times and thought I might share how it went for me, seeing as I might never have if this thread hadn't come along. Long post ahoy! This is what happens when somebody who can't cook doesn't catch the hint and just keeps trying.

First time I tried it wasn't long after this thread came along. I made one very big mistake off the bat: I tried to halve the recipe first. The maiden attempt did not go over well, even the cats wouldn't touch it. Ahem.

So I tried again a little while later, this time following the recipe word-for-word as well as I could. I took "toss" to mean "thoroughly mix in well" and discovered I had too many lady fingers -- oh well. Another thing I consistently did wrong without realizing it was cracking the eggs into a bowl and then plucking the yolks out to separate them. The custard was the consistency of milk, and not very tasty so far as I could tell. I tried cooking it a little longer and then leaving it in the fridge overnight; later, I tried adding cornstarch, but it never thickened up.

For my third attempt, I consulted a coworker's boyfriend who used to work as a professional baker. After explaining my runny custard problem to him, he gave me the following tips: the point of slowly whisking the egg mixture with the milk is to get them both to the same temperature, so if slowly means a tiny bit at a time + whiskwhiskwhiskwhisk then do it that way. He also said cornstarch should be kept in the freezer, and that I wasn't using nearly enough.

So I tried it, but came up with the same problem: runny custard. The cornstarch did a little more good but I didn't get the consistency of pudding, which is what I was hoping for. At this point I was rather concerned at the sheer number of eggs I'd been using for a failing recipe, so I stopped for a bit and consulted the coworker's boyfriend again. He suggested I use a different recipe (he grabbed one for me that used premade custard hahaha!), and assured me that custard, like meringue, is just one of those things that is hard to make. I'm not entirely sure if he was just being nice.

I tried it one more time using all aforementioned lessons learned and, predictably, failed. So I gave up until I had the opportunity to ask somebody to make it with me....

...just this morning my grandmother had a look at the recipe and said she'd help me make it. *tears of joy* We actually started pretty early by taking the eggs out of the fridge so they'd be at room temperature when we started mixing.

For the raspberry mixture, she took "toss" to mean "pour the raspberry sauce over the cake and smooth it down." (Er, we used angel food cake for lack of anything else. Also, we used a clear, deep cake pan because she didn't have any clear bowls.) It actually looked very nice, there were defined layers but the raspberries seeped down between the cake, too. It looked like a proper trifle! I was so happy. *more tears of joy*

As for the custard, she made it exactly the way the recipe said to. She separated the eggs by cracking the shells in two and then keeping the yolk in one half and basically just poured the yolk back and forth between the shell halves until the whites had separated. When the milk started steaming she poured it very slowly into the eggs while whisking constantly, then immediately returned it to the pan. She kept the heat on high for a little bit, then turned it down to low when it seemed like the thing was trying to boil. I volunteered to stir constantly, but she kicked me away from the stove because I was stirring too fast. I got an "A" for effort, though.

The custard remained on the stove for well over the suggested "about four minutes," somewhere closer to ten or fifteen. The sauce started to thicken fairly quickly toward the end, there were actually vague lumps in it when we poured it into a bowl to let it cool. Maybe three hours in the fridge, then she poured it over the raspberry layer the same way she poured the raspberries over the cake; slowly, all over, then smoothed it down. I was expecting it to be thicker, the way pudding mix thickens into pie, you know? It was about the same consistency of refrigerated pudding, though. It pretty much seeped down into every nook and cranny of the raspberry/cake layers. I think we just didn't use enough cake.

We haven't eaten it yet, but I suspect it's going to be more like a spoonful of custard with cake and raspberries somewhere in the middle. We'll see in a few hours yet. I'm so excited!

She also said that runny custard can still be tasty custard; it can be turned into eggnog, too, apparently. When I asked repeatedly during the mixing process "what if it doesn't thicken up?" she said we'd just have homemade eggnog. LOL!

So there it is. Osu's adventures with abbot's special abbey trifle (as made by her grandmother.) I'll tell you guys how it tastes.

[TW]

Wow. Those trifles look and sound great. I've invited a couple of friends over and baked our way through the Redwall Cookbook. In fact, we made Hare's Haversack Crumble and Savory Squirrel Bakes last weekend. We'd made Savory Squirrel Bakes once before, but we used 6 Italian cheese blend this time whereas we used cheddar the first time. I think the cheddar bakes were better and that became the joke of the day.

The Hare's Haversack Crumble was rather nice, too. I like even though I'm not a huge fan of blueberries and so did everyone else. It didn't turn out exactly right, though. When we pulled it out of the oven, there was a lot of juice under the crust. The blueberries were ones I picked some time ago and froze, so we figured that they just hadn't thawed enough. It still tasted really good with vanilla ice cream.

Does anyone else think that there should be a forum like the fan art and fan fiction where people post there own attempts at Redwall recipes?