Stephanie and Andrea French have never been very fond of the traditional Christmas meal. Growing up in Ottawa, the sisters and owners of the Pie Shoppe and Panoramic Coffee Roasters (721 Gore Avenue) began cooking and baking at an early age. When they were teenagers, they convinced their parents to let them come up with new ideas for the family feast each Christmas.

“We get really sick of the same things every year. You know how you’re supposed to have turkey or ham three or four times a year for holidays?” Andrea said when the Georgia Straight stopped by the Chinatown shop. “We stopped doing that and started making homemade pizza, lasagna, or a big fish.”

Stephanie moved to Vancouver in 2006 to study at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She worked in kitchens while in school and enrolled in a YMCA program for young entrepreneurs shortly after graduation.

“I had three months to write a business plan, and there was a grant affiliated with it close to $5,000. That bought a roaster,” she recalled, explaining that Panoramic Coffee Roasters came before the bakery. “For the beans, I wanted to do organic, fair-trade, and in season. Not a lot of that was happening a few years ago.”

When Andrea relocated to the West Coast a few years later, the sisters decided to launch a bakery to complement the coffee business. The Pie Shoppe opened in December 2012.

“This will be our third winter,” Stephanie said. “We’ll have chocolate-pecan, pumpkin, pear, apple, and chocolate chess pie. We’ll also have baked custards, a salted honey pie, and a lot of sugary-sweet pies that are rich.”

The Frenches are at the shop most mornings baking pies. Most of the desserts they make are for custom orders, but the shop also offers a limited number of individual slices per day—to go with the coffee. After the holidays, the Pie Shoppe will close for five weeks while the sisters travel. But before they leave, they’ll get together for one of the only Christmas traditions they maintain: enjoying a trifle.

“It’s what we eat at Christmas because we can’t eat pie anymore. We make so much pie that we have to do the other things that we like to eat,” Stephanie explained.

Trifle is a layered dessert of sponge cake, custard, whipped cream, fruit, and toppings, such as shaved chocolate, toasted almond slivers, or brandied cherries. The Frenches said that when they were kids, they would buy cake and custard mixes.

“Now we make all the components from scratch, but you can go out and buy every single one of these components and put it all together, and it would still be fabulous,” Stephanie added. “It could be as complicated or simple as you want.”

To pair with the dessert, the sisters suggest a glass of sherry, a hot rum toddy, or a mug of warm apple cider.

Stephanie and Andrea French's trifle

Ingredients

Layer 1 (Victorian sponge cake)
¾ cup (185 mL) caster sugar
¾ cup (185 mL) butter, softened
3 medium eggs
1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla extract
¾ cup (185 mL) all-purpose flour
¼ tsp (1 mL) salt

Layer 2 (English custard)
5 Tbsp (75 mL) sugar
2 cups (500 mL) whole milk
2¼ cups (560 mL) heavy cream
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and scored, seeds scraped and set aside for Layer 3
8 egg yolks

Layer 3 (whipped cream)
2 cups (500 mL) heavy cream
¼ tsp (1 mL) sugar
Seeds from 1 vanilla bean bean (from Layer 2)

Layer 4 (mixed fruit and garnish)
5 cups (1.25 L) assorted fruit, such as blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and sliced strawberries or bananas
2 Tbsp (30 mL) shaved chocolate for garnish
¼ cup (60 mL) toasted almond slivers for garnish

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350 ° F (180 ° C).
    
2. To make the sponge cake, beat the sugar and butter until fluffy using a stand mixer. Add eggs one at a time, then mix in vanilla. Add flour and salt, and mix until incorporated.
    
3. Transfer cake batter to a 9-inch round or square cake tin. Bake for 40 minutes or until a knife inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Set aside to cool completely. Once cooled, slice cake into 1-inch cubes.
    
4. To make the custard, stir together the sugar, milk, cream, vanilla bean, and egg yolks in a small pot over medium heat. Bring mixture to a boil to thicken, then remove from heat. Set aside to cool completely. Remove vanilla bean.
    
5. To make the whipping cream, combine all ingredients using a stand mixer on a medium setting for 3 to 4 minutes, until soft peaks form.
    
6. To assemble the trifle, place cake pieces at the bottom of a trifle bowl, a 16-cup (4-litre) bowl, or about 12 8-ounce (227-millilitre) Mason jars. Layer fruit over top, then custard and whipped cream. Garnish with shaved chocolate and toasted almond slivers. Refrigerate until serving.

Yield: 10 to 12 servings.

Recipe has not been tested by the Georgia Straight.