The stuff on the bottom is homemade vanilla custard. It is delicious, but a bit tricky to make. Because of the holiday, I was cooking it in a strange pan, on a strange stove, with no thermometer. It overheated and broke. I had to start over. It was worth it! That’s saying something.

This is a picture of my sister making a Stars & Stripes Trifle last year (well, I made the custard, but she did the rest.) I think it is interesting to compare hers with mine. We used the same recipe but ended up with quite different results. She somehow figured out how to make a dam for the custard, which prevented it from flowing into the blueberries. Thus her trifle has the distinct blue layer that mine lacks. Also, you can see two rows of stars in hers. Mine had two rows of stars as well, but they were completely obscured by the custard and blueberries. : (

My sister is quite the food stylist. She carefully positioned every berry and the results were gorgeous. I took a quicker “all right, these berries go here” [pour them in] approach. I think my trifle turned out looking pretty well, unless you’ve seen hers! In any case, they both tasted amazing.

Like Pdad, I enjoyed pretending that all of the raspberries and blueberries made this dessert a health food. Unlike Pdad, I knew the vanilla custard had two full cups of heavy cream, so I felt a little guiltier at the self-deception.