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Wednesday 18th November 2015

Mulled Pears Trifle Recipe

Ingredients serve x 6

Mulled wine ingredients.
500ml x good red wine,
150g x sugar,
6 x cloves,
Zest x1 lime
Zest and juice of 2 x Clementine’s,
100ml x orange juice,
1 x sticks cinnamon,
1 x star anise,
1 x bay leaf
Grating of nutmeg,
½ cut and split vanilla pod,

3 x firm Williams’s pears peeled
2 x peeled granny smith apples
100g x frozen cranberries or a punnet of fresh redcurrants or blackberries
3 x whole peeled Clementine’s or Satsuma’s pulled into segments
Juice half a lemon.
5x leaves of gelatine. (Or agar agar follow packet instructions to set 500ml)
Approx 15 x sponge fingers (or trifle sponge cut into chunks, this recipe also works well with Madeira cake slices laid into it!)
425ml thick custard
150g soft mascarpone
350ml whipping cream only half whipped
1 tbsp icing sugar
100g white chocolate
20g dark chocolate (optional)
30g toasted almonds (optional)
Mint leaves to garnish. (optional)

First make the mulled wine base, heat a large sauce pan and add the sugar and all remaining ingredients. Add a splash of the wine just to cover and simmer rapidly, so mixture is syrup consistency. Next add the pears and remaining red wine then bring to a simmer. Cover with a disc of grease proof paper and simmer pears until just soft, this will take around 12 minutes. Take pan off the heat and tip ingredients into a container. Place the gelatine leaves in cold water to soften, then take 500ml of the mulled wine and drain through a sieve into a clean pan, warm on hob. Squeeze the excess water from the gelatine and stir into drained mulled wine until dissolved then remove from heat. Chop the poached pears into even bite size chunks along with the apple and place with the cranberries and Clementine segments into the base of a roughly sized 20cm/8inch trifle/pudding bowl. Squeeze over the juice of half a lemon mix the fruit with your hands. Now lay over sponge fingers to roughly cover the fruit then pour over mulled wine - cover with cling film and set in fridge for 11/2 hrs or until jelly is set. Next, pour over your custard to cover the jelly fruit and sponge, now using a whisk fold the mascarpone and icing sugar with the soft whipped cream until smooth and then place into a piping bag - pipe peaks all over the custard. Finally, using a fine grater grate the white chocolate all over and sprinkle over toasted almonds. You can add a touch of dark grated chocolate if you desire for extra presentation. Eat straight away or store in fridge until required. When serving, garnish with fresh mint leaves for extra colour and dig in!