But I’m a drunken rebel and so I did all kinds of verboten things with this recipe 🙂
A couple of months ago my friend Rebecca gave me the challenge of making vegan trifle. I said “sure, but those bowls are so big, and it’s not really the kind of thing that’s that portable, so I’ll totally do this, but not until I have a dinner party or something.” Then I realized the sad sad truth, who am I kidding? I don’t do dinner parties, I’m way too disorganized for that 🙁 . Also, (and I’m sorry for not admitting this at the time if you’re reading this Rebecca) trifle isn’t really one of those things I find that appealing. I mean, it’s okay, I wouldn’t kick it out of bed for eating cookies or anything (although I’d probably just steal the cookies and perhaps just have some stimulating conversation with the trifle instead 😉 ) . I just feel like the cake gets wet and soggy and the water from the fruit ends up all pooled at the bottom. I don’t know, I just don’t totally understand the appeal when there are so many other awesome dessert options available.
However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I could kill 2 birds with one (blarney) stone for St. Patrick’s Day! Maybe even three birds with one stone since I also realized, there’s no reason why I can’t just make small individual-sized portions of said trifle. This will not only solve the problem of having way too much left over, but also, since I’m not assembling them until just prior to consumption, the sog factor would be a non-issue! (no that’s not a typo spell-checker! “Sog factor” has a much better ring to it than “sogginess factor”, and also, I hear that shortening words is what all the kids are doing these days and like the embarrassing old-man that I am, I just want to be cool 😉 ).
As I was making the various parts to this recipe, another side benefit of all this green presented itself to me. Not only is this an excellent St.Patrick’s themed dessert, but it looks so fresh and green that it totally reminded me of spring which is mere moments away! I know that the weather of course doesn’t care what the calendar says, but I’m going to choose to believe that the minute that March 20th gets here, birds will be singing, the sun will shine everyday, and I can start cracking out the spring coat shoving all my winter gear to the back of the closet where it belongs. To be shunned like the hated garments that they are (sorry about that winter gear, you do keep me from getting frostbite and hypothermia, but that doesn’t mean I have to like you and what you represent. It’s nothing personal).
This was originally just going to be a lime based dessert, but all that spring-iness got me thinking about tropical vacations. Now I’m what you might call a fan of mojitos, and since I’d already bought some fresh mint to pretty up the final presentation of this trifle, I figured why not add some to the pound cake as well and use it up? This in turn reminded me of the small bottle of tequila that I had in my cupboard that my brother brought back for us after a recent trip to Mexico (Thanks Lincoln!). Unfortunately, I have horrible, horrible (did I say horrible?) associations with tequila, and so I thought the bottle would never be consumed 🙁 . Adding it to cake though and thus amping up the sunny vacation feel seemed like just the ticket.
And thus ladies and gentleman I present to you the Mojito-Margherita Trifle. I admit that it’s a trifle more time consuming then some other recipes you could make, but I promise you it’s not that difficult and totally worth it. So let’s all say adieu to winter, and to spring I say “Spring it on!” 😉
Yield: 6-8 servings
Pound Cake Ingredients
- 3/4 cups pastry flour
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/3 of a package of soft tofu (approx 1/4 pound or 115 grams)
- 1/4 cup cane sugar
- 2 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/4 cup coconut milk
- 2 tablespoons lime juice
- 1 tablespoon lime zest
- 1 tablespoon tequila
- 1.5 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint
Lime Simple Syrup Ingredients
- 1/2 cup water
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 1 tablespoon lime juice (if you don’t like it tangy/limey, feel free to add less)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Lime Whipped Cream Ingredients
- 1 can coconut milk (or just the remainder of the can of coconut milk that you used for the pound cake)
- 2 tablespoons coconut oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/4 cup maple syrup
- 1 tablespoon lime juice
- 1 tablespoon lime zest
Other Ingredients
- 2-4 sliced kiwi
- Mint for garnish (optional)
- Toasted and chopped pistachios for garnish (optional)
Pound Cake Directions
1. Preheat oven to 325F and either grease a muffin tin or line with cupcake liners.
2. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a small bowl.
3. In a medium bowl, using an electric mixer on high speed, beat together tofu, both sugars and vanilla until completely blended (might take a couple of minutes).
4. Add the coconut milk, lime juice, lime zest and tequila and beat until fully incorporated.
5. Stir the mint into the dry ingredients until it’s flour-coated.
6. Add the dry ingredients in 2-3 batches to the wet mixture beating well between additions.
7. Fill muffin tin with batter. You can fill it most of the way to the top (3/4 or maybe even more) since it doesn’t really puff up that much.
8. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.
9. Cool completely.
Lime Simple Syrup Directions
1. Combine sugar and water in a small saucepan and heat until sugar is completely dissolved in the water.
2. Remove from heat and add in lime juice and vanilla.
Lime Whipped Cream Directions
1. In a small mixing bowl, beat all the ingredients together until fully combined.
2. Allow to chill in the fridge.
3. At this stage, if you have it, add liquid to a whipped cream cannister. If you don’t have one and the mixture isn’t “whipped” enough for your liking, consider beating in a bit of icing sugar to thicken it up somewhat.
Assembly Directions
1. Take the pound cake and cut into bite sized pieces.
2. In dessert glasses (or just a bowl if you don’t care about being fancy), put a layer of lime whipped cream. Then lay down a couple of pieces of cake and ladle a few spoonfuls of lime syrup over the cake. Next put a layer of kiwi. Repeat until glass/bowl is full (or to desired amount) ending with a whipped cream layer.
3. Garnish with toasted pistachios and mint if desired.
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