Ultimate Indulgent Christmas Trifle on a Budget
Ultimate Christmas Trifle (On a budget)
I love a trifle! Whether it’s a budget branded low price offering, or even something more indulgent – I’ll be digging in by the spoonful alongside nice sherry. The best trifle I’ve ever had though has to be Nigella Lawson’s Anglo-Italian trifle. A boozy little number with limoncello and amaretti biscuits. However, I wanted to try my own ultimate Christmas trifle. Why? Well, with Nigella’s own recipe and ingredients comes a large price tag – around £16 when I looked into comparing the supermarkets like Asda and Tesco.
I wanted to attempt my own adaptation of Nigella’s fab trifle recipe, reducing some quantities and adapting some ingredients for cheaper alternatives like tinned fruits and alternative spirits. Doing this reduced the cost for this still luxuriously tasty ultimate Christmas trifle to around £6! The only downside is, that my alternative festive trifle serves around 8-10, rather than the 10-12 Nigella’s own recipe suggests. However, In my recipe, the expensive Limoncello is replaced with lemon juice and the alcoholic hint comes instead from amaretto – giving the boozy taste alongside the almond taste you’d usually get from amaretti biscuits.
Serves: 8-10
Ultimate Christmas Trifle Ingredients
- 16 trifle sponges 80p
- 200 grams blackcurrant jam 40p
- 300 Canned Raspberries £1.08
- 425g Canned Pitted Black Cherries £1
- 1 pack Lotus Caramelised Biscuits 50p
- 50ml amaretto 50p (for amount used)
- 200ml water
- juice of 1 lemon (3op)
- 2 large eggs (separated) 33p
- 100 grams caster sugar 10p
- 500 grams mascarpone cheese 89p
- 50 grams ground almonds (optional)
For this recipe, ingredients were sourced from Asda
Ultimate Christmas Trifle – Method
- Split the trifle sponges and line the insides with half of the jam. Place the halves back together then line the base of a decent sized large glass bowl. Break half a packet of caramelised biscuits into crumbs using a bag and rolling pin, then scatter most of them over the sponges. Save some for the top of the trifle.
- Mix 40ml Amaretto together with 150 ml water and juice of 1/2 a lemon and pour over the base mix.
- Put the remaining jam into a large saucepan with the lemon juice from the remaining half lemon. Melt over a low heat before emptying in the tinned raspberries and cherries. Spoon the contents carefully around the pan so the fruit does not break down too much – it needs to just be bubbling with juices.
- Tip the mixture from the pan over the biscuit mix and sponge pieces.
- Whisk the egg yolks (ideally in a mixer) with the caster sugar until you have a yellow mixture that is smooth and silky. Whilst still whisking, add in the remaining 10ml of amaretto and 50 ml water. Continue the whisking process until you’re left with a light mousse. Whisk in the mascarpone until well combined and like a thick fudge sauce-style consistency.
- For the last part, use another bowl, whisk the egg whites until firm; fold these into the mascarpone mixture carefully before spreading this gently over the contents in the glass bowl. Cover the trifle and place in the fridge to allow the flavours to mix, ideally overnight. When ready to serve, remove from the fridge and toss on some finely broken crumbed caramelised biscuits and the optional almonds if used.
- Finally, enjoy… making sure you delve down through the layers when serving 😉
Want to try more of my frugal recipes? How about…
Finally, if you are sourcing ingredients as part of your larger Christmas shop, make sure you maximise savings by using tools like the Asda price guarantee or the PYO multibuy trick via the My Waitrose Card.
This looks delicious!