Never settle for store bought ladyfingers…

I wanted tiramisu. I haven’t made it in over a year. I make a mean tiramisu.

I didn’t make tiramisu. I made this trifle instead. I had eggs and cream and espresso and assorted liqueurs. I had all of the ingredients for homemade ladyfingers. But I needed one other ingredient and that ingredient is the reason I made the trifle.

Mascarpone cheese was what I needed and quite frankly I was too cheap to buy it. At the grocery store I stopped in on my way home from work, it was $5 per package and I needed two packages of it. I didn’t want to spend $10 on mascarpone cheese…so I made this hazelnut trifle as it didn’t require anything I didn’t already have at home.

For the record, I can now buy mascarpone for $3 a package at our newly opened Trader Joe’s. There will be tiramisu in the near future…and when I make it, I can spend that extra $4 on a cheap bottle of wine from Trader Joe’s.

My trifle is adapted from a recipe in Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey. It’s the first thing I’ve made from the book because most of the recipes in that cookbook seem ridiculous, expensive and over-the-top…and their trifle is no exception. Yet I still made it. I think it was the lure of Kahlua whipped cream.

Their recipe called for hazelnut pound cake. This sounded excessively heavy to me so I made ladyfingers. They’re pretty easy to make and much better than the store bought ones could ever hope to be. Not that I’ve ever knowingly eaten a store bought ladyfinger. I’m better than that…and anyone reading this should be better than that, too.

To assemble the trifle, I sandwiched ladyfingers together with Nutella. I then dipped them in a mixture of Frangelico hazelnut liqueur, Kahlua coffee liqueur and espresso. On top of the ladyfingers, I added alternating layers of chocolate pastry cream and Kahlua whipped cream as well as chopped hazelnuts.

The pastry cream was made with Nutella, melted chocolate and Frangelico. The whipped cream was made with Kahlua and espresso powder. Yes, this trifle was a little rich and boozy…but what’s wrong with that?

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