Gingerbread Trifle

Now that the last of the holiday entertaining is over, I've started packing away Christmas. :(  It always makes me a little sad to put away all of the sparkle and shine.  I've toyed with the idea of leaving up the decorations until The Epiphany, but it seems a bit false since we don't actually celebrate it here.  Still for those of you who do, here's one more holiday recipe.  The Gingerbread Trifle I made was a big hit with the in-laws, so I'll share the how-to.  Unfortunately, it was such a big hit that I forgot to take pictures before it was half gone.

First I started with making Gingerbread Cake.  I creamed a stick of butter with 1/4 cup molasses and 1 cup light brown sugar.  I mixed in 3 eggs, one at a time, 1/2 cup applesauce, and 2 tbsps milk.

In a separate bowl I whisked together 1/2 cup sorghum flour, 1/2 cup soy flour, 1/2 cup arrowroot starch, 1/2 cup tapioca starch, 1/2 cup almond flour, 1 tsp ground ginger, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg, 1/4 tsp ground cloves, 1/4 tsp salt, 1 tsp xanthan gum, and 1 tsp baking soda.

 I added the dry ingredients to the mixer bowl and beat until a batter formed, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.

I divided the batter between 2 - 9" cake pans that had been buttered and lined with parchment paper and baked the cakes for 25 minutes at 350.

Trifles are just cake chunks layered with custard and whipped cream.  I've been known to make my own custard, like I did here for this bananas foster cream pie.  But not every dessert is going to see complete from scratch commitment from me.   I was in a time crunch so instead of standing over a stove whisking, I opened up some pudding packs.  Really.  Don't judge.

I keep these in the pantry for the kids lunches.  They are made with corn starch so are gf friendly.  I used 8 snack cups.  At 4 oz each, that translates to 4 cups vanilla pudding.  To this I added 1 1/2 cups pureed pumpkin, 3 tbsps cinnamon sugar, and 1/2 tsp allspice and mixed thoroughly.

I broke up the cake into chunks and layered the cake chunks, followed by a layer of pudding, followed by some dollops of whipped cream, and continued in this manner until the trifle dish was full.  It took 3 layers of cake, pudding, whipped cream to reach the top of the trifle dish.  I used up 1 1/2 of the gingerbread cakes to make the trifle.

Thanks for popping in and checking out my gingerbread trifle.  I'm sharing this at Midnight Maniac's Meatless Monday, and Dr. Laura's Tasty Tuesday Adventures, Gluten-Free Homemaker's Gluten-Free Wednesday, and Fudge Ripple's Tuesday Night Supper Club.