What to Do When You Eff Up A Holiday Dessert

1. Start with a clear vision. Perhaps this Swiss Cake Roll recipe caught your eye like it did mine.

 

2. Assemble ingredients, with a special focus on booze, for the whipped cream filling:

 

3. Bake the cake. Start it off at 7 pm on Christmas Eve Eve.

 

4. Follow directions to a t. Unroll cake and watch as this happens:

 

Oops.

Oh shit.

 

5. Cuss.

 

6. Evaluate. At this point, the groceries are closed for the night (well, not the 24 hour Giant Eagle, but that is kind of a drive for the way you're feeling). You could try to turn the fucked up cake into a trifle-y sort of thing, which could be interesting given you've never made trifle before and have only a vague idea of what it entails based on having been served one 13 years ago when you were an exchange student in Cambridge. You could also get up early in the morning (CHRISTMAS EVE ARRRRGH) and go to the grocery to buy a replacement cake.

 

7. Go with what you know! All trifle entails is layers and you've already got cake and whipped cream. And Cointreau.

 

8. Remember that you have Bird's Custard in your pantry for some god-unknown reason, and recall that Bird's is what English people use for trifle! Prepare the custard!

 

Also text your friend Sarah, whose boyfriend is Irish, and ask whether it's supposed to be pink in the can, orange when mixed in the milk paste. It's not, according to the Irish! Oh well!

9. Decide that the trifle needs some fruit, so hastily cut up some oranges and clementines and caramelize them. 

 

 

10. Let the oranges cool a bit, then assemble everything in a Corningware dish.

 

Doesn't that look foul you guys!

 

11. God only knows what it tastes like, so run out to Heinen's the next morning, cursing to yourself under your breath all the while because JESUS CHRIST could people be any more rude?, and buy a small Christmas torte cake and a pint of Jeni's just in case. JUST IN CASE.

 

12. Go home and taste the trifle. Oh, it is actually really good! Like, really good!

 

 

 

13. Surprise, you have $20 worth of alternate desserts to take along with you to your boyfriend's house for Christmas! You will have no idea what will become of that torte.