A "very gorpy" dessert

[Phil Collins]

My daughter graduated from Cal Berkeley today and after the ceremony a small group of friends and family members went to the "Broken Drum" in San Rafael for a little lunch and some good beer. The "Broken Drum" is a nice comfortable place to get together for a casual meal and the food is good and thoughtfully prepared (not to mention the house brewed beer).
Afterwards we all got together at the house and had coffee and dessert. My daughter Claudia had requested I make her something "really gorpy"for her Graduation dessert, she loves my bread pudding and my strawberry shortcake so I decided to compromise by making an English trifle.
The trifle must have been created by pastry chefs looking for ways to clean out their refrigerator boxes. It utilizes about everything a good pastry chef would have on hand: cake, lady fingers, custard, berries and berry sauces, fruit, whip cream, the whole works. Some pastry chefs will even utilize chocolate but I don't think it works and leave it off my list. I made two trifles for Claudia, I skipped the lady fingers and used vanilla cake. On the bottom of one bowl I used a pineapple dessert syrup on the other a boysenberry syrup.
I topped the syrups with a layer of cake and on the pineapple laced one I put a layer of bananas on the other a layer of strawberries. On top of the fruit I put a layer of English Custard Cream, a custard made in a double boiler with sugar, vanilla, egg yolks and a little corn starch. It makes a nice creamy custard which I layered in cold of course, On top of the custard I put another layer of cake and strawberries drizzled with some Agave syrup. One more layer, freshly whipped cream and more sliced strawberries. The whole concoction should be made a day ahead so it can sit and congeal into a "super gorpy" spoonable dessert.
When we were ready we dug in and enjoyed the gloppy creations. The pineapple/banana combination was voted the best of the two and my daughter was satisfied with my efforts. My blood sugar is probably off the charts however, you don't want to eat like this every day.

[Pat and Reese]

Congratulations, Claudia, on graduation and on your choice of dessert!