Ingredients

For the sponge cake:

30g butter, plus extra for greasing
60ml whole milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
35g cocoa powder
3 eggs plus 3 egg yolks
170g caster sugar

For the poached kumquat:

150g whole kumquats
150g sugar

For the custard:

30g cornflour
4 egg yolks
100g sugar
500ml whole milk
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
2 tbsp Cointreau
150ml cream

For the chocolate mousse:

160g Valrhona dulcey chocolate (or use 60–70% dark chocolate with 40g caster sugar), roughly chopped
grated zest of ½ orange
2 eggs, separated
180ml cream

To assemble:

80ml Cointreau
400ml cream
2 tablespoons caster sugar
60g cacao nibs
zest of ½ orange

Method

Start by baking your cakes. Preheat the oven to 175°C and set a rack in the middle of the oven. Grease and flour two 21cm round cake tins and place a round of baking paper in the bases.

Heat the milk and butter in a small saucepan over a low heat until the butter has just melted, then add the vanilla, set aside and keep warm.

Combine the flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa powder in a mixing bowl and whisk a few times to combine and get rid of any lumps.

In the bowl of a freestanding electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip your eggs and yolks with the sugar on high speed until ribbons form. The eggs should have significantly lightened in colour, tripled in size and, when you pull the whisk out of the mixture, it should briefly leave a ribbon on the surface before falling into the mixture.

Fold one-third of the egg mixture into the dry ingredients, then alternate adding the warm butter and milk mixture and the egg mixture to the dry ingredients until everything is light, fluffy and combined. Folding gently is key here; you want as much air in the mixture as possible.

Divide the batter evenly between the prepared tins and bake for 30 minutes until the cakes are set, springy and bouncy, and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tins on a wire rack.

Next, poach your kumquats. This can be done days in advance and refrigerated. Slice the kumquats, skin and all, as thinly and evenly as possible, and remove any seeds.

Combine the sugar with 150ml water in a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Add the kumquat and poach gently over a medium heat for 7–10 minutes until the fruit is slightly more tender and softened.

Set aside to cool in the liquid.

For your custard, combine the cornflour, egg yolks and sugar in a mixing bowl and whisk until lightened and the sugar has dissolved.

At the same time, heat your milk, vanilla bean and a pinch of salt in a saucepan over a medium–low heat. Stir every so often with a spatula to make sure the bottom isn’t catching.

Once small bubbles appear around the edge of the pan, the milk is hot enough. Begin ladling a small amount of the hot milk mixture into the eggs while whisking at the same time. Once you have ladled about half the milk into the eggs, pour everything back into the saucepan. Place over a low heat and stir with a spatula until the mixture is thickened and bubbling.

Once it is bubbling, allow it to bubble for another full minute. The cornflour doesn’t activate until it has reached a certain temperature, and don’t worry about the eggs curdling either; the starch deactivates the proteins in the eggs that coagulate at high temperatures.

Remove the vanilla bean, as it should have done its job by now, and pour the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into another bowl.

At this stage, add the Cointreau and whisk to combine. Cover the bowl with a piece of baking paper so a skin doesn’t form as the custard cools. Set aside. Once cooled, lightly whip the cream in another bowl and fold this into the custard. Transfer the mixture to piping bags, or just cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use.

To prepare the mousse, heat the chocolate with the orange zest in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water. Once melted, set aside.

In one bowl, whip your egg yolks by hand until light and fluffy.

In another bowl, whip the whites to soft peaks. If using dark chocolate, add the extra sugar to your egg whites during the whipping process. The sugar will dissolve and create more stability in the mix if added towards the middle instead of at the beginning.

To put everything together, fold the yolks into the chocolate, followed by the whites. Once you have folded in the whites, whip the cold cream to soft peaks in the same bowl used for the egg whites.

Finally, fold this into the chocolate mix gently and set aside. For ease, I suggest putting the mousse into a piping bag for assembling the trifle later, but it’s not absolutely necessary.

To assemble, spoon one-third of the custard into the bottom of a trifle bowl. Next, add a layer of cake (aim to use a trifle dish the same diameter as your cakes, but if the size isn’t quite right, just break up the cake and add it in one tight layer).

Spoon half the Cointreau onto the cake, then add another one-third of the custard. Sprinkle half the poached kumquat on top of this. Next, pipe on a layer of mousse, starting from the outside working your way in.

Repeat the layers with the remaining cake, Cointreau, custard, kumquats and mousse. At this stage, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate until you’re ready to serve. An hour before you want to serve your trifle, remove it from the fridge to allow the mousse to soften slightly.

For the final steps, whip the cream with the sugar until soft peaks form. Pour that over the trifle and sprinkle the top with cacao nibs and orange zest. Serve immediately.

From Always Add Lemon by Danielle Alvarez (£26, Hardie Grant), out now

3 extremely photogenic trifle recipes for the ultimate chilled-out dessert