I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge fan of traditional dark Christmas cake. After a full on lunch & dinner, the last thing I want to partake in is a huge slice of Christmas Cake full of dried fruit. Plus all that dried fruit can have rather .. ummm… interesting affects on one’s stomach 😛
I prefer the lighter Christmas dessert of trifle, which is usually made with jelly, custard, sponge cake and a bit of booze :P, but this is my version for this year. I’ve used a ready made red velvet cake, which cut down on my prep time, and made a beetroot jelly out of prepackaged beetroot which I received from Leaderbrand. You can of course, bake a red velvet cake & cook up your own beetroot, but I’m not one to complain when someone’s done the hard work for me 😛
I know the beetroot jelly is a somewhat unusual idea, but you honestly don’t notice it under all that cake & cream, and you have the added bonus of getting some great nutrients into the kids 🙂
Ingredients:
- 1x Red Velvet Cake
- 1 bottle (300ml) cream
- 2 teaspoons icing sugar (to taste)
- 250g Leader Brand Prepackaged Beetroot
- 1/2 cup cold water
- 8g Agar Agar (or the equivalent in gelatin)
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1 and 1/4 cups cold water
Method:
- Making the Beetroot Jelly:
- Place beetroot and ½ cup water into a blender and blend until smooth. Keep aside.
- Place agar agar into a saucepan. Add water and stir to dissolve the agar agar.
- Place the saucepan on stovetop on a medium setting and bring the contents to a very gentle boil.
- Stir continuously. When the agar agar has dissolved completely, add the sugar.
- Stir to dissolve the sugar. Again bring to a gentle boil.
- Add the beetroot and continue stirring. Do not boil.
- Pour into flat rectangular mould – I just used a tempered glass food storage container.
- Allow to set.
- Once set, cut into smaller pieces. Set aside some of the beetroot jelly to decorate the top of the trifle.
- In a seperate bowl, break the red velvet cake into smaller pieces.
- In another bowl, whip the cream and icing sugar until it forms peaks. Set some aside to decorate the top of the trifle.
- In a large glass bowl or a trifle bowl, add in a layer of red velvet cake.
- Add whipped cream on top of this.
- Add a layer of beetroot jelly.
- Repeat layering until all the red velvet cake, beetroot jelly & cream is gone.
- Add on the cream that you set aside to decorate the top & sprinkle over the leftover beetroot jelly.
- Serve cold & the same day, as the red colouring from the red velvet cake & beetroot jelly may run into the cream 🙂
Enjoy 🙂
