Cooking up Spring Trifle
When people think about cohousing, one of their first thoughts is typically about food—community meals cooked by a rotating team of resident chefs in a big kitchen in the shared common house, or potlucks in the courtyard, with everyone bringing the best from their kitchens (or a loaf of crusty bread and a hunk of cheese picked up on the way home from work).
At Cathedral Park Cohousing we love food. Whether we’re eating out at one of Portland’s many incredible restaurants (there are more than 30 restaurants and pubs within a 10-block radius of our site in St. Johns!), hitting up a food cart pod (yes there is a massive one within the same radius), or cooking seasonal meals inspired by the local farmer’s market, we think about food a lot in this community.
Sharing Meals to Cure Loneliness
Shared meals are one of the best cures for loneliness. We loved hearing stories during the height of the pandemic about people cooking meals in their own kitchens, and then coming together on Zoom to eat together. We also heard from other cohousing communities about neighbors eating together from across their courtyards, coming as near as they could in that time when we were all needing connection.
Watch this Space for Recipes!
We will be using this space in coming weeks to share some of our favorite recipes, as well as reviews and shout outs of some of our favorite restaurants in the Cathedral Park neighborhood and beyond. Until we can eat together, we’re excited to think about food together! Join us for a Learn About, and come talk food with us!
(Also, this is not going to be one of those spaces where you have to read a whole book to earn your way to a recipe, but we may sometimes throw a little story in at the end just for fun.)
Abby’s Spring Rhubarb Trifle
This recipe was inspired by Nigella Lawson’s boozy rhubarb trifle recipe, but after adapting it to feed a gluten free, dairy free, egg free, kid-friendly crowd, it bears only a passing resemblance to her version, so I present to you my own take. The thing I’ve learned about trifle is that it’s an incredibly flexible, crowd-pleasing concoction. I’ve made a tropical version with passion fruit-guava jello blocks for a summer party, and a fudgy chocolate brownie version with hunks of candied ginger for Christmas time. They’ve all been gluten and dairy free, and they’ve all been polished off by people who typically eat all the gluten and dairy they want. I’m not sure they would have even noticed if I hadn’t told them. So get yourself a pretty glass bowl and get to layering your favorite flavors!
This recipe fed a crowd of twelve, with minimal leftovers
A Recipe to Feed a Crowd
The Ingredients:
- 1 yellow cake (Use a mix, or use your favorite easy recipe, or just buy a premade cake from the bakery. This is one place where the density of a gluten free cake can actually be beneficial. For this recipe I found an egg-free, gluten-free cake mix at my local grocery store, but just about anything could work!)
- Vanilla custard (Use whatever you like. I’ve made dairy-free custards and curds in the past, but I needed to go egg-free for this Easter crowd, and thanks once again to Google, I discovered that the easiest custard in the world involves just coconut and oat milk, cornstarch, sugar, vanilla, and a touch of turmeric for color, and comes together really quickly on the stovetop.)
- A couple pounds of rhubarb
- A pint of so of strawberries
- Sugar to taste (There’s a lot of sweet in the cake, custard and pre-made whipped cream, so I went tart on the rhubarb)
- Whipped Cream (Dairy, if that’s your jam, or whip up some cream from the top of a can of coconut milk, or be like me and grab some dairy-free Coco-Whip out of the freezer case at your local health food store. I used two tubs here. My brother-in-law told me that if you stir in a tub of Tofutti cream cheese it’s richer and more stable, but I was going soy-free for this one too. But, I’ll have to try that next time!)
- Something syrupy (I used the juices from my cooked rhubarb (more on that below). Nigella added booze. I believe in you.)
Equipment:
- A fancy trifle bowl on a stand is nice (my friend Allison gave me one, or this whole madness of trifle experimentation may never have begun), but any large, straight-sided vessel will work.
- Every bowl in your kitchen, and a good complement of wooden spoons
The Process:
Prep:
- Choose your pudding recipe from Google (or the back of the box) and prepare pudding. Set aside to chill.
- Cook rhubarb
- Slice 1 lb into ¼ inch pieces and cook in a small saucepan over low heat with a couple tablespoons of sugar until it begins to break down. Strain liquid and save both liquids and solids
- Slice remaining rhubarb in 2 inch pieces on the diagonal and place in a roasting pan in a single layer. Sprinkle with sugar and roast at 400º for about 30 minutes, until tender. Let cool, and save any juices.
- Prepare cake
- Cut your cooked cake into cubes and spread on a tray to dry out a bit. Consider putting it in the oven on low heat for a few minutes if it’s super moist
- Put cake into a medium bowl and pour the reserved rhubarb juices (or whatever syrup you choose) over it, stirring to coat as evenly as you can.
- Let sit while you work on next pieces
- Prepare strawberries
- Wash, hull and slice strawberries
- Put in small bowl and sprinkle with sugar
- Whip your cream, or thaw your cool whip
- Wash trifle bowl, which may not have been used for a few months or maybe year
Assembly:
- It’s all about the layers. You can be as simple or as artful as you wish!
- Typically the cake layer, soaked in syrup, covers the bottom of the bowl
- From there, build up!
- Feel free to get fancy with fruit, for a good visual from the outside
- In this case, the layers from bottom-up went like this:
- Cake
- Rhubarb
- Custard
- Strawberries
- Whipped cream
- Raspberries, for garnish
***
Until my friend Allison handed me a trifle bowl at her yard sale a few years back, I had never eaten a trifle, much less made one. But having been handed a challenge, I set out to fill the bowl, and it’s become a favorite thing to make; it’s always a crowd pleaser, and there are endless opportunities for creativity and reinterpretation. I hope you’ll give it a try!
Until my friend Alicia started dreaming up Portland’s newest cohousing community, I never thought I would be a part of building anything like Cathedral Park Cohousing. But having been presented with a beautiful vision for a community of belonging and reciprocity, I couldn’t walk away from the chance to be a part of it!
Creating a cohousing community isn’t unlike making a trifle, after all. It’s all about the careful preparation of amazing ingredients, layered with care to create something more beautiful, sweet and tangy than any one component on its own. Add yourself to our recipe—join us at an upcoming Learn About Session!