Trifle Improv 2: Think of trifle as a way to give a bad cake a second chance – “bad” meaning under-baked, over-baked, or dried out from being leftover too long – wait, that sounds like most of my college roommates.

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Trifle Improv

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“Bad” is a matter of context. “Dry” may be considered bad in a cake, but excellent in a biscotti. A moist cake, on the other hand, would make a mushy trifle, while a dry cake will be able to hold up to the treatment and turn into something glorious.

Improvisation № IV/ii: This post is the 2nd of a 3-part series that chronicles the metamorphosis of failed cake into creamy and successful trifle. To read the series from the beginning, click here.

Cake Fail

“Bad cake” is what usually kicks off a trifle event at my house other people’s houses, because they usually wind up calling me a bitch for help, and I couldn’t give a shit love to show off pay it forward. Once a cake has been deemed a failure, it goes through a brief appeals process (does anybody want this cake). If the appeal is rejected, I either commence with a trifle, or I freeze the cake for a future trifle. If the cake is frosted and the frosting is delicious and not overly sweet, I’ll leave it as-is. Otherwise, I’ll remove the frosting (it’s OK if some crumbs come with it), store it in the fridge, and spoon ¼-cup of it into my Goddamned-Crack-of-Dawn™ morning oatmeal.

Cake for Trifle

Although the measurements are wildly flexible, you could use about 6-8 cups of loosely-packed cake. You can get by with a hell of a lot less, but if you fear that you won’t have enough, you can always supplement what you have with an inexpensive pound cake from the grocery store, or even cake-style doughnuts.

The cake is often soaked in or sprinkled with a liquid. That’s helpful if the cake is dry, but it’s also an opportunity to add flavor if the cake is boring. Anything from liquor to simple syrup to coffee will do. Use enough to moisten the cake, but not so much that you turn it to mush. The cake may absorb moisture from the other trifle ingredients, depending on how you arrange things, so this step isn’t necessarily necessary. Regardless, you want a cake that can hold up to this kind of treatment: pound cake, angel food cake, brownies are all good choices.

Red Velvet Cheesecake

I recently baked a Red Velvet Cheesecake that needed a second chance. On one hand, it was spectacular success. I can’t believe the number of cell phone snapshots, texts, and tweets it produced. On the other hand, it was so over-the-top rich, that after a couple bites, I lost interest in that sonofabitch. I’m telling you this as someone who could put away an entire 18″ pizza if he felt like it. Plus, the frosting was way too sweet for me. It’s hard for me to attach myself to most frostings made of powdered sugar. And then there’s the question about it being red.

But the big problem was that I accidentally overbaked it – not terribly … I sort of just nudged it into the area of “passable but disappointing.” The cheesecake layers were somewhat forgiving of this, but not the brownie layers. In other circumstances, I’d’ve counterbalanced the dry brownies with a couple scoops of ice cream, but this cake was already so insanely rich, that there was no way I could pull that off. So, instead of ice cream, I decided to rip the cake apart, and mix it with a custardy pudding and cream cheese whipped cream, baby!

 

Continue Reading: Trifle Improv, Part 3 →

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