Great Aunty Mickey's Xmas Trifle
A Xmas Tradition Five Generations Strong, as Strong as the Lady in our Family Famous for Making It and as Strong as the Amount of Booze she used!
Mickey and My Story.
Making Aunty Mickey’s Xmas Trifle is a family tradition that goes back long before Great Aunt Mick, to her mother, my Great Grandmother, Shar (or Amelia as was her official name) and I expect perhaps to her mother, Sarah-Jane but my generation always remembers this as Aunty Mickey’s trifle as she is one who made it every Xmas and perfected it.
My farming family is a story of strength and resilience in women, for multiple generations of the mothers in my line who were widowed through tragic farm accidents and illness and suicide, and left to run the family farm, Oakview, with their children.
Aunty Mickey story was widowed, as was my Grandmother and my Great Grandmother, left behind by her husband and the father of their young twins, a boy and a girl. A merchant who was often away working while Mick resided on her childhood farm with her mother and the comings and goings of her three sisters and their families.
We never talked about the details of my Great Uncle the way we talked about the loss of my great grandfather leaving behind my Great Grandmother Shar and four daughters, or my own grandfather, when my mother was just three and her sister, a baby. My nana, newly returned from WW2 where she served as a Red Cross Nurse and her husband newly arrived home to New Zealand too, after his service as an army officer in the South Pacific had very few years together as a family before fate intervened. Philip, my grandfather, illness arose upon his return, my grandmother nursed him through having already seen so much sickness and death and it took him, a cancer we suspect, now attributed to his exposure to chemicals during the war, my nana having to research the illness in books in the library, for no one could tell her what was wrong or how to treat him.
We talked openly about the passing of the generations of men, through illness and horse riding and farming accidents but we never talked about Mickey’s loss because Mickey left no room for pity, no room for small talk, no room for hushed whispers. She bowled through rooms, tiny, white haired but fierce and loud, razor sharp and particular like my grandmother, like all her sisters, she was a force and was someone who, as a child, I adored and feared crossing in equal measure.
Mickey called me, “Swanny”, in a non-cuddly family it was an extension of affection I had not expected and did not quite understand as the slap-stroke, the quick 1-2 that took many a relative out, that the women of my maternal family were so well known for. I later found out that it was a term she had used for my mother, the story of The Ugly Duckling. Apparently we started out not much to look at but blossomed as we grew. I laugh now for I understand them, who they were and why. It is not kind, nor would it go unreprimanded today if touted about as casually as it was then but that generation, toughened as they were as multiple generations of mothers and daughters, left to negotiate a world entirely dictated by men who did not much care for strongwilled, opinionated females, especially those who chose not to remarry but run their farm instead, and their lives, as single mothers rather than selling up.
When I returned to the farm as a young woman in my early twenties, entrenched in my life in the world of fashion, Mickey couldn’t be happier for it was Mick who gave me the many ballgowns she’d made by hand throughout her life that she still had, hats and wedding tiaras from the 40s and 50s and 60s that she had leftover from her days spent making the most beautiful work from a room at the farm for women of the towns around her.
My grandmother, once widowed, became a fashion buyer and while she and Mickey were farm girls at their core, they were also the most glamorous of farm girls who understood a well cut dress and what to wear with what, hair perfectly set to match, impeccable manners that belied the mud caked wellies and women who once hauled hay all day. I identified, as a girl who grew up in the bush, barefoot and stained cheezle orange by the red dirt I so loved, on escapades through the scrub and swamps with my dad and his friends, now made up to the nines, a fashion designer and unrecognisable, I supect, to anyone who grew up with me.
When Mickey died, I was sent her most expensive piece of jewellery, that she never wore. She had left me her diamond engagement ring, which I had not expected, a piece of jewellery one might attribute to sad memories but to me, I took this as a gesture of the special connection I had always suspected we’d shared but that she would never have said openly.
And to a little girl, a little lonely in the world, who grew up always feeling something of an outsider in her own family, an only child from a turbulent home in a remote corner of what was a far off place to all on the farm, it was Mickey who was first to ever make me feel like I belonged with them at the table, or was worthy of being ushered into a kitchen full of family busily preparing all the traditions I had missed and taught by her, how to make Aunty Mickey’s Trifle. It is, to this day, one of my life’s most precious and formative memories.
THE RECIPE
1 x Madeira Sponge (cut in half through the centre longways and into fingers)
2 x Tins of Sliced Peaches
2 x Packs of Strawberry or Raspberry Jelly
400ml of Sherry or for the non-alcoholic version, a Fruit Juice, apple works well.=
750ml of Custard (We would use homemade custard being that Oakview was a dairy farm but a good quality store bought custard is perfectly fine).
2 x 500ml of Thickened Cream (whipped until stiff with a teaspoon of icing sugar added)
A few punnets of whatever berries you choose, we would use strawberries, raspberries and blackberries.
THE METHOD
Place a layer of sponge fingers in the bottom of the trifle bowl, using a tablespoon dampen the sponge fingers with your chosen liquor or juice.
Place a layer of berries followed by a good layer of custard then jelly, another layer of sponge, then a layer of tinned peaches and a good layer of cream.
Repeat this in it’s entirety until the bowl is almost filled, you need at least two layers of custard and two layers of jelly. Wet down each fruit and sponge layer with your chosen liquor or fruit juice. The final layer should be a thick layer of cream, topped with berries or cherries or peaches.
NOTE: On each layer of fruit we would try to stand up strawberries or peaches or cherries on the side of the glass bowl for appearances sake.
I and my mother’s family hope you enjoy this glimpse into our Great Aunt Mickey and if you’ve never made a Xmas Trifle, maybe next Xmas you can give this one a go.
We hope you’ve all had a wonderful Xmas. Pip, Hugo, Nes, Pam and Wednesday xo
Our family trifle is almost the same, just minus the peaches. There is currently 1/3 left in the fridge. 😁
We also have a hard sauce/brandy butter that Great aunt Ina used to make that went with the pudding. It was just whipped butter, icing sugar and brandy. Some years she was very heavy handed with the brandy. 😜 Pudding just isnt the same without it though.
Some family traditions are worth keeping.