This was the second dessert I prepared this weekend. I said I would bring something to Tim’s family’s Easter dinner and decided on a dessert. When I was young, my mom often had Angel Food Cake for dessert. She had a few variations of how she served it, but one of my favourites was with a lemon topping. Unfortunately, it was not one of the recipes I thought of asking her before she passed away, so I haven’t had it in decades. I thought that I might try a search and see what I could come up with. I really had no memory of how she made it, so this was pretty much a shot in the dark!

Lemon Trifle:

Basically, I pretty much made this up. I found a recipe that looked promising for my Mom’s lemon topping on Food.com.  I used the suggested ingredients and ratios to come up with this trifle. It was delicious, but I’d make a few modifications next time, more so for presentation than anything else.

Ingredients:

• 1 pouch of Sherrif lemon pie filling mix – prepared according to the instructions – Cooled completely.
• 3/4 cup of whipping cream + 1 cup of whipping cream – whipped
• vanilla sandwich cookies (I used a row of Girl Guide Cookies because I have an entire case on hand) Anyone want to buy cookies??
• 2 angel food cakes (I bought one from the bakery and it wasn’t enough to fill my trifle bowl. I think a cake mix makes a larger angel cake and one mix would probably make enough, but the store bought ones seemed smaller and I would buy two next time or make my own.)
• lemon rind

Method:

1. Cook the lemon pie filling according to the directions and then cool completely.
2. Meanwhile, whip the cream. (If you wish, you can add a tablespoon of icing sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla to the whipped cream, but I didn’t). You can do this all at once and make an approximate division for the recipe or whip it in two batches. This isn’t rocket science and it will not make much difference if your whipping cream is a bit off. Both the lemon and whipping cream are delicious, the combination really just makes it creamier.
3. Remove about 1/4 of the lemon pie filling and set aside. (I didn’t do this in my original attempt, but think the brighter yellow and stronger lemon would be a nice addition.)
4. Take the remain lemon pie filling and fold in the 3/4 cup of cream that you previously whipped (if you mixed it in one batch, just take slightly less than half of the batch.)
5. Chop 10 to 12 vanilla sandwich cookies (lemon would be good as well).
6. Break the cake into small bit-sized chunks. Divide the cake into thirds.

Assembly:

1. Place one third of the cake pieces on the bottom of the trifle bowl.
2. Add 1/3 of the lemon cream filling.
3. Add second layer of cake followed by 1/3 of the lemon cream filling.
4. Add the reserved lemon curd. It will be a very thin layer.
5. Top this with the crushed cookies and the final layer of cake.
6. Add the remaining third of lemon cream.
7. Top with the remaining (1 cup) of whipped cream.
8. Garnish with lemon rind and/or additional cookie crumbs.

There really is no right or wrong way to do this, I made it up! As long as your whip cream whips properly, you’re good to go. I suppose you could even use Cool Whip in lieu of the whip cream, but I like the real thing. This sounds like lots of steps, but I literally whipped this up in about 30 minutes. It was delicious and light!