Chow It’s Merely a Trifle
posted by on July 30 at 18:06 PM
I am about to FedEx someone a cake. I fully expect it to arrive looking not much like a cake. Banged up, smeary, sad. But this person happens to be out of town right now, but needs this cake this week, and in an email I was just composing to her I wrote: “Perhaps you can make a parfait out of it. (Does parfait have cake in it? Layers of cake and yogurt/pudding? Wikipedia says that’s not parfait. What am I thinking of?)”
I know there is a dessert that is cake layered with yogurt or pudding or cream, usually served in a clear glass vessel so that you can see the pretty layers, because I once had a bad version of it at Septieme. It’s perfect thing to make if you’re in custody of an old cake, a busted cake, a FedExed cake.
What the hell is it called? Hard to look up something on the internet if I don’t know what it’s called. Type “cake and yogurt or pudding” in Google—although not in quotes, because if you put it in quotes you get nothing—and you get 698,000 hits: Yogurt Cake with Lemon Glaze, Lemon Pudding Cake, Banana Cake Yogurt, Chocolate Yogurt Creme Pudding, etc., etc.
So I called the Quick Information Line library: 206-386-4636. Lord knows I love the library. (Previous adventures with library geniuses here and here.)
The first lady asked me if I was thinking of tiramisu or Boston creme pie. I was not. (But good guesses!) She transferred me to a reference librarian who, she thought, would know more.
I explained the situation to the reference librarian—layers of cake with yogurt or pudding or cream, usually served in glass so you can see the layers, great recipe if you have an old cake that’s gone stale or is broken and you want to use it somehow—and she said: “Oooh kaaay.” There was a pause. “Let me see if I can find anything. Hold on.”
A minute later, she comes back and says, “I actually find exactly what you’re saying in Cooks.com. They just call it left-over cake.”
Hilarious, but—but—
She interrupted, “Oh, and there’s something called trifle. It’s layering of cake and other things.” That’s it! That’s what I’d been sold at Septieme all those years ago. Trifle.
After hanging up, I announced the results of my two minutes on the phone with the library—it is always a good idea to just call the library, they are wonderful—and my inability to use the internet as well as librarians can. Why can they find things I can’t find?
Annie Wagner said, “My friend Caroline says, Google will never replace librarians.”
Next time I go to the library, I’m going to bring a tray full of these, for the staff:
are you gonna put booze in it ?
can i have some ?
please ?
pretty please ?
with a cherry on top ?
You totally have to put booze on the sponge, aka pieces of broken cake. And the British put a layer of jello in it (they call it jelly, those weirdos). The cream layer can be pastry cream or custard. Bird's custard out of a can is not as good as homemade custard. And you need to put sprinkles on the whipped cream on top. Then it's really festive.
Fuck the librarians! You can ask me this shit! My friends know me as a wealth of useless information.
...and when you've grown weary of trifle, there's always syllabub and spotted dick; odd that the effete Brits would have invented such masculine-sounding desserts...
cake (yogurt OR pudding) layers glass =
[google]
sounds delicious!
Google won't replace librarians, but it will replace libraries.
If the recipient of said probably scrambled cake merely adopts the expedient of consuming gin until they can no longer say syllabub (ok that's too easy - until they can no longer pronounce trifle), then the cake will seem quite fine and proper whatever state it arrives in.
Gee, Fed Exing cake. You can do it if you first freeze the cake and then package it in some dry ice in a styrofoam container. Swiss Colony ships pastries like that and it does not destroy the look or flavor of the items.
I actually paraphrased my friend as saying, Google will never replace librarians, because librarians know how to use Google.
It's just like Desk Set.
my mother must have made 1,000 trifles when i was growing up. I didn't like them that much until I realized that they were way easy to make and you could just put a bunch of alcohol in it =)
"Annie Wagner said, “My friend Caroline says, Google will never replace librarians.”"
Let's hope you're right. But what might this turn into ?
Google Voice Local Search
While I applaud you wanting to treat the librarians, DON'T bring homemade foods. Librarians deal with a lot of crazies that love us as much as you do, and we have to assume that anything left as a snack that doesn't come from someone we personally* know might be tainted with drugs, poison, body fluids, etc. You think I'm kidding, but most of us would rather be safe than take food of unknown origin from 20-40% of the people we deal with.
A nice gift is something like a Whitman's Sampler: a thick box protected by cellophane.That way we know you want to give us chocolate and not merely have a way to transmit your voodoo love potion made from your sweat to our unwitting mouths. Otherwise we'll probably throw away untouched whatever homemade edibles you bring to us.
*if the librarians know you as a local journalist, they might be okay with it. but then again, the last stranger staffer to mention offering sweets to public servants was dan savage, and we all know what was in those cookies....
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