Have you ever spent the day poring over recipes to find the perfect lemon ginger buttermilk Bundt cake? Then, you spend half the night making it: grating a chihuahua-sized hunk of ginger, using all your high-quality butter and organic eggs, squeezing lemons until your hands are raw and shriveled, then gleefully pouring the shining batter into your well-greased Bundt pan, baking it, letting it cool, excitement mounting as you tap your fingers on the counter, waiting for the precise moment in which you can gently invert the pan and present your cake in golden glory on the platter, imagining what wonderful words your friends will say when they see and taste your masterpiece…
Yes, and when you carefully tug at the pan to lift it from the cake, smugly anticipating that feeling, the smooth release of cake from pan, and you find yourself, incredibly, with
*Sniff*
I will note that it is not the first time this kind of tragedy has struck my house, but it only seems to happen with lemon Bundt cakes. Chocolate or otherwise come out just fine. What exactly is my problem, anyway?
Well, as you can see, it seemed to be a dreadful end to such a lovely story. But like the Boy Who Lived (forgive my reference, but I’ve just finished all 7 of them in slightly over a month’s time; a bit late to the game but there nonetheless), a spark of hope still twinkled when all appeared to be lost.
Alright, enough with the bad metaphors - here’s what to do when your cakey creation has crumbled like your faith in the government we are all supposed to trust and respect. Oops, I promised to stop. The answer? Make a trifle! It’s the best use of leftover cake I can think of, and it works very well for gatherings of all kinds. All you need is the following:
Cake (sponge, pound, or bundt)
Fruit (anything in season)
Curd or Jam (your choice again)
Heavy cream, whipped with a tablespoon or two of sugar until stiff
And the layers should go a bit like this:
Cake-Curd-Fruit-Cake-Curd-Fruit-Whipped Cream
or some variation thereof. Many people also pour booze (such as Grand Marnier, framboise, whisky, etc) over the cake layers to lightly soak them, though I did not.
The picture is pre-cream, but it ought to give you the idea.
Since all my lemons had gone into the cake itself, I made some passion fruit curd instead of the standard lemon for spreading in between the layers. The recipe uses passion fruit puree, which can usually be found frozen at Mexican and Latin American markets (I buy it from Reyna’s, a grocer in the Strip). I absolutely love the tartness of passion fruit, and as a curd it gets the perfect opportunity to do a frenzied tart-sweet cha-cha on your tastebuds.
I don’t have a proper trifle dish, so the layers don’t look quite as pretty as they should, but in the end it really doesn’t matter. People will be pleased and excited to eat it since the idea of a “trifle” manages to sound (and look) like a clever and elegant creation, but it hardly takes any work at all. This is one of those desserts that has a very satisfying work:crowd-pleasing ratio.
Passion Fruit Curd
Use this anywhere a recipe calls for lemon or lime curd - for filling sponge cakes, cookies, tartlet shells, you decide…
1/3 to 1/2 cup passion fruit puree
2 tablespoons lime juice
3 eggs
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup sugar
6 tablespoons butter, cut into bits
Whisk the eggs and the egg yolk together. Place all ingredients in a small (2-quart) heavy-bottomed saucepan. Heat on a moderately low flame, stirring frequently, until mixture thickens and begins to bubble (about 5-6 minutes). Remove from stove and transfer to a bowl. Refrigerate until ready to use, about 1 1/2 hours (curd will thicken further as it chills).
