In episode 060 we are making a Pumpkin Trifle Dessert! This is a show stopping dessert that is perfect for Thanksgiving or Pumpkin Season (hello fall!!). It has layers of crushed Biscoff Cookies, Pumpkin Cream Cheese Mousse and Whipped Cream. The whole thing is topped of with chocolate toffee bits. It will quickly replace pumpkin pie for you.
Transcript
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Intro: Welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich.
Susie Weinrich: Again, I’m going to say to you guys, I really try hard not to date these episodes. So I like to keep them pretty universal for the entire year. However, we are right at the holidays and there’s a lot of recipes that are so specific to the holiday season or to winter, and this is one of them. Today we are making a Pumpkin Trifle that is so impressive and so delicious. If you’re not a pie person and pumpkin pie is coming out for Thanksgiving, this is an excellent alternative to making pie.
You’re still going to get all the flavors, the pumpkin, the whipped cream, but in more of like a mousse special dessert feeling. So if you’ve never made a trifle before, it’s basically a layered dessert. I think it’s a traditional English dessert. It’s generally layers of pudding or whipped cream and cake. It’s also served in what’s called a trifle bowl, so that’s usually a stemmed bowl that has tall sides and it’s just round. Of course, I will link a trifle bowl in the show notes for you so you can check that out and see exactly what you need.
For this dessert, you could absolutely make it in individual cups as well, if that’s something you want to do. If you want to just serve individual cups, that totally works. But for a really knockout presentation, that Trifle bowl is so great. So the flavored layers here are not going to be pudding and cake. Instead, what we’re doing is we’re layering biscoff cookies, which I’ll explain later, and then a cream cheese pumpkin mousse and whipped cream and then you’re going to top it all off with these toffee chocolate bits. It’s just the most perfect, delicious mixture ever.
Tips and Tricks: Let’s get into a few tips for this recipe before we go through all of the instructions and the ingredients. This is a recipe that you’ll want to plan ahead for. So after you make it, it needs to refrigerate for four to 24 hours to set up and get a little bit firmer so you can scoop it out and serve it in the layers.
Then let’s talk about a couple of the ingredients. Number one, the Biscoff cookies. It sounds like an exotic ingredient, I guess not one that you’re probably buying every day, but you can absolutely find them in the cookie aisle of your grocery store. It comes in a red package. They’re called Biscoff Cookies, and it’s like a really thick graham cracker that has a cinnamon brown sugar kind of molasses flavor. So it pairs perfectly with the pumpkin.
I think if biscoff cookies are not your jam, you could absolutely sub in ginger snap cookies could work in this place, especially because they’re kind of firm. So when they soak up the liquid from that pumpkin mousse, they would soften just a little bit. So that could work too.
During the holiday season, usually in the baking aisle, near the chocolate chips, you can find something called Heath milk chocolate English Toffee Bits. If you know what a Heath candy bar is, it’s basically that, but crumbled up into bits. That is the perfect topping for this recipe. Now, if you go to your grocery store and they don’t have those, then you can absolutely just buy two or three Heath candy bars and just crush them up. That will work perfectly fine.
All right. One last ingredient I want to talk about is the pumpkin. There are two options in the grocery store when you’re buying pumpkin puree. There’s going to be a pumpkin pie puree, and a hundred percent pumpkin puree. You want to make sure that you’re buying a hundred percent pumpkin puree. It doesn’t have all the extra spices and seasonings, so it’s what you want for this recipe.
Pumpkin Trifle Recipe: All right, so I think the rest of my tips will come out during the making of this recipe. So let’s go ahead and get started. There are a couple pieces of equipment that you’ll want to have to make this recipe. Number one is the trifle bowl, if you are going to use that. Then you’ll want to have either a stand mixer with a paddle attachment or a handheld mixer with just two beaters. Then you’re going to need two gallon size Ziploc baggies. So once you have all that, then you can go ahead and get started.
In the stand mixer or in a bowl, you want to beat the cream cheese until it’s completely fluffy. You need two eight ounce packages of cream cheese that are completely softened. When I say completely softened, I mean all the way through to the middle. So you want that cream cheese to be really soft so that when it blends up, there are no lumps or pieces left. You want it to be completely smooth. Actually cream cheese softens pretty quickly at room temperature and to speed up that process a little bit more, if you didn’t think about that ahead of time, you can actually cut your cream cheese into small one inch cubes and it should soften very quickly.
So you’re going to go ahead and beat those two eight ounce packages of softened cream cheese until they’re nice and fluffy. This could take a couple minutes, and that’s okay. Now you want to gradually add in one cup of brown sugar and mix that until it’s completely smooth and incorporated. Finally, you’re going to add in one 15 ounce can of a hundred percent pure pumpkin puree. Again, don’t get the pumpkin pie filling. Two teaspoons of vanilla extract, one and a half teaspoons of ground cinnamon, one teaspoon of ground ginger, a quarter teaspoon of ground nutmeg, a pinch of ground clove. I love clove, so I probably put in a super healthy pinch and then an eighth of a teaspoon of kosher salt.
Go ahead and mix that up together until it’s fully combined. At this point, you can set that aside, and now we’re going to make the whipped cream. So when you are whipping cream, if it is very cold and the bowl is very cold, it’ll whip up faster and creamier. So I like to make sure that the cream stays in the fridge until it’s time to whip. So what you’ll want to do is take 16 ounces of heavy whipping cream, so that’ll be about two cups very cold. Go ahead and whip that either with your handheld mixer or the stand mixer and take that until about a soft peak forms. So a soft peak is when you can pull the beater out of the whipped cream and it will make a peak and just dissolve right back in pretty quickly.
Now you’re going to gradually beat in a third a cup of powdered sugar. You want to continue to beat the whipped cream until about a medium stiff peak forms. So when you pull the beater out, it will make a little peak or like a little wave, and it will stay there for a good amount of time. That’s when you know that your whipped cream is done but you haven’t created butter. You don’t want to take it past the whipped cream stage into butter.
All right, so once that’s done, you can set that aside and now what we’re going to do is get to the Biscoff cookies. So you want to unwrap all of the Biscoff cookies. You’re going to need two 12.3 ounce packages. So usually they come in the 12.3 ounce packages, so you just need to buy two at the grocery store. Unwrap all of those. Put one package in one Ziploc bag, put the other package in the other Ziploc bag. It will just make it easier for when it’s time to assemble. So either with a meat mallet or a gosh, what’s it called? A rolling pin. Name escapes me. Go ahead and smash all of those Biscoff cookies until they’re just tiny bite size pieces. You don’t want to crush it into powder, but you also don’t want really big pieces. Somewhere in the middle is really good, just like a bite size. Now that you have all of the pieces created, it’s time to actually assemble your trifle. So grab the trifle bowl and what you’re going to do is start with one of the Ziploc bags of biscoff cookies, pour it into the bottom of the trifle bowl and spread it evenly across the bottom.
Then you’re going to top those cookies with half of that pumpkin cream cheese mixture and spread it so that it’s a really nice, even big layer across those cookies. Then you’re going to top the pumpkin with half of the whipped cream mixture. Again, spreading it all the way to the edges so that you have a nice smooth layer. Then you’re going to repeat that. You’re going to top that with the crushed biscoff cookies, then the rest of the pumpkin, then the rest of the whipped cream, and then you’re going to finish by sprinkling on a third cup of those toffee bits that we talked about, right over top, and those are super, super delicious.
You have it all layered and it’s ready to go. You’re going to cover it just with a little plastic wrap or whatever, and refrigerate it for at least four hours up to 24 hours. Then when it’s time to serve, you can bring the whole trifle bowl to the table, bring a serving spoon and plates for people. Like I said, that little extra bowl of those toffee bits is just that extra little touch of deliciousness.
So I hope you enjoy this pumpkin trifle during your holiday season or whenever you’re craving a little pumpkin dessert. This is perfect. So of course I will link all of the recipes that I talked about in this episode right in the show notes for you. I’m also going to link to my Thanksgiving recipe category so you can find all of the Thanksgiving and holiday recipes when you need them.
Here’s my only request for you. I would love to have you out there, rate and review the show in your preferred podcast player. As a newer show, it just helps other people find Let’s Make Dinner and love all of the recipes that you’re loving.
Outro: So until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner, make your dinner time a little easier. See ya.
Tips Shared
Make sure you have a stand mixer and/or a hand held mixer to make this dessert. It is traditional to also serve it in a trifle bowl, but you can also serve it in individual cups.
Keep your heavy whipping cream really cold until it is time to whip up. It will whip up faster and creamier if it’s nice and cold.
You will have 2 options at the store for pumpkin puree; Pumpkin Pie Puree and 100% Pumpkin Puree. You want to make sure you buy 100% Pumpkin Puree.
If you can’t find Biscoff Cookies you can also use a ginger snap cookie, the flavor will be stronger but it should still work.
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