Vegan Summer Fruit Christmas Trifle

Vegan Summer Fruit Christmas Trifle

It has occurred to me that many of my followers probably reside in the Northern Hemisphere where it is winter. But in Australia it is summer and I couldn’t be happier because I am absolutely obsessed with summer fruit! I love stone fruit of any variety. As soon as I see mango’s peaches and cherries appear in the supermarkets I get so excited I could almost cry. Sometimes I think stone fruit gets a bit of a bad wrap because they do like to absorb so many more pesticides than other fruit because of their soft skin. In Australia they spray the fruit at least three times over before they actually gets to the shelves, but its no reason to avoid stone fruit. Buy organic when you can and when you cant just give them a really good wash before you eat them. If you are really concerned you can always soak the fruit in a mixture of water and a little bit of apple cider vinegar for a few minutes and it will remove many of the chemicals. So now that that’s out of the way lets talk a little bit how great stone fruits are for our health! Besides the vitamin C, fibre and beta carotens that you find in most fruit, stone fruit like peaches nectarines and plums have special compounds that help fight metabolic syndrome – where excess body fat can lead to problems like diabetes and heart disease. They are also a great source of vitamin K and potassium. Two peaches will give you the same amount of potassium as a banana. Vitamin K (plums are the highest source) is great to strengthen teeth and bones. Vitamin K rich foods are also really good at preventing bruises if you bruise easily. And they are delicious!

Trifles are a really popular Christmas dessert in Australia. They come in all sorts of different combinations. They usually comprise of layers of sponge cake, fruit, jelly or juice and alcohol and lots and lots of cream, custard and even marscapone style cheese. I see so many photo’s of beautiful trifle ideas this time of year, I decided I had to try and make a vegan (and of course alcohol free) version. It’s actually a very easy dessert to make. Many people use a ready made, store bought sponge to make this dessert even easier but I wanted to make my own so that I didn’t have to deal with any of the added sugars, dairy and chemicals. Takes a little more time but it is worth it. I used wholemeal spelt flour for the cake so it turned out dense but since they cake was going to be soaked in juice, I preferred a denser cake so that it wouldn’t turn into mush and disintegrate. I’m not really an expert on baking, so all I can tell you is that it was yummy and totally vegan! I also used silken tofu to create the custard cream but if you don’t like eating soy, whipped coconut cream would work just as well. The recipe is a great way to use up stone fruit if you are like me and get a little over excited and buy too many at the supermarket. The recipe would also work with any other fruit you like if stone fruit are not in season in your part of the world. Hope you enjoy the recipe.