Dessert - Making Trifle Safe

As you can imagine, the amount of jelly (and sometimes fruit) in a regular trifle renders it poisonous to those with a citric acid intolerance.

But, fear not! With a little work, and a few recipe tweaks, you can still enjoy a trifle this holiday.

Ok, so your whipped cream and custard are fine to stay, it is the jelly, the fruit and possibly the cake that need addressing here.

The jelly: you cannot (to my knowledge) buy any ready-made jelly without it has citric acid in. So, we have to make our own. You will need:

• squash (see the post on drinks)
• gelatin sachet (you can get these in the home baking isle of most supermarkets)
• hot and cold water

then you just make it up as per the instructions on the gelatin packet sachet. Do not forget to dilute the squash, though! Alternatively, you might be able to use apple juice, but I haven't tried with this.

The fruit: You can either leave it out, or a straight swap for apple/pear/blueberry chunks works well

The cake: You can either go around the shops checking packets until you find a plain victoria sponge that is safe, or you can make your own and ensure you use a butter that is safe. I always opt for make your own the day before you make the trifle, but that is just because I like the be 100% sure everything is edible.

Combine ingredients as per the usual order et voila!

I Want to Eat Crisps

Crisps.

Like iced buns, I never really understood why crisps were so good. They are basically potatoes in fat and salt.

Think I may have cracked it there...

Anyways, crisps are now another minefield. Fear not, though, because there are several options left open. A couple are even the 'healthy' ones!

If plain, ready salted crisps of almost any variety are your thing you're good to go and can stop reading here, because the reason crisps are off the menu at all (apart from the sodium content) is that they put citric acid in when they add a lot of the flavourings. I'm not sure why, someone told me it might help the flavours bind or something? Not that it matters, to be honest.

So, as I've just said, 'ready salted' (plain) are good.

Further than that you are very, very limited.

Although they are still the relatively plain variety, you CAN have:

pombears

sunbites



if you are so inclined