This recipe for mango passionfruit summer trifle was something of an emotional rollercoaster but hopefully it was a ride for one person only — me — and I can simply manage all of your expectations without any jumpscares. In short — the idea of a low-effort trifle for sweltering weather appeared to me (creative smugness), the recipe took all of fifteen minutes to make (smugness peaking), it tasted bewilderingly lackluster despite the objective individual deliciousness of each ingredient (plummeting self-worth, paradise lost), I shoved it balefully into the fridge and pretended it didn’t exist (denial, abnegation), the next day I petulantly swiped another spoonful and it tasted sublime (soaring joy, paradise regained). Finally, I acknowledged my rash heedlessness and realised I should’ve known all along that a trifle improves with time, even one that takes no time at all to make (magnanimous, gracious concession).

I know February is already waning so claiming this recipe for summer is a bit late in the game but the air was so humidly thick today that I felt like I was breathing yoghurt and wading through kinetic sand; ergo a recipe that is mostly assembly with no heat involved still earns its place. Furthermore, depending on whether the season’s bounties are meagre or, well, bountiful, there are options for canned fruit that work perfectly respectably, especially once squashed together in all those layers — meaning you could well enjoy this all the way into winter.

Let’s examine her layer by layer, like a beguiling cross-section of the earth’s mantle. Lining the base is brioche — salty-sweet, almost cake-like in its richness, and easy enough to find in the supermarket (not cheaply, mind you, but I’ve never regretted the investment — it makes transcendent cheese toasties). Brioche brings an arch, egg-golden presence that rises above the usual trifle sponge and works beautifully with the zingy fruit, but look, if you can only find trifle sponges you’ll still have a great time.

Next up is a modest dousing with white rum, chosen for its robust yet summery boozy-breathed cane sugar sweetneses, and a trio of the most nectar-drenched, distilled sunshine fruits — mango, peach, and passionfruit. Now, you and I know that the passionfruit is the most important player here, with its piercing zestiness and arresting sour-sweetness; but it needs heft and body to bolster it which is where the mango and peaches come in. Both bear mild but magnificent fragrant sweetness, both lend an ombre layer of sunset orange to the trifle.

Finally, the mascarpone-enriched whipped cream, with its blunt, buttery richness and stabilising qualities, it adds a rounded and sophisticated depth of flavour to the cream and prevents it from flopping overnight in the fridge. Despite the many paragraphs it took to describe this, it really did take me fifteen minutes to make — including hand-whisking the cream — but it was that overnight trip to the fridge that allowed the ingredients to relax into each other, to say “I don’t know where I end and you begin” like codependent best friends in a high-drama TV show — brioche crumb softening into lush, perfumed mango, juicy peach subsiding into billowing, sturdy cream, passionfruit infused throughout. And with a little forward planning and a capacious chilly bin you could even feasibly make this on a camping trip.

For further fruity pudding recipes — only some of which carry the same relative convenience as this one, to be fair — I recommend my Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream, my Simple Rhubarb and Custard Tart, my Chocolate, Rum, and Prune Truffle Ice Cream, this Fresh Peach Galette, or Vegan Rhubarb Panna Cotta.

Mango passionfruit summer trifle

Zero heat involved so you can stay cool, this is luscious and luxurious and truly takes about fifteen minutes to make BUT I’m begging you to let it sit overnight before you eat it — sorry — at which point the tastes evolves and blooms into pure sunshine. Recipe by myself.

Note: these quantities are for a wide-mouthed trifle dish of 1.5L (6 cups) capacity, if your dish is a little larger then just increase everything a little, because this recipe is forgiving. But, the width is important, you can’t — obviously, I hope — make this in a 1.5L water carafe.

• 4 thick slices brioche
• 60ml (1/4 cup) white rum
• 1 large, ripe mango, or 1 x 400g tin mango slices
• 2 ripe peaches
• 8 passionfruit (though feel free to add more), or one of those small jars of passionfruit pulp in syrup, in which case add several squeezes of fresh lime juice for balance
• 3 tablespoons sugar (omit if using jarred passionfruit)
• 300ml cream
• 250ml mascarpone – take it out of the fridge just before you start to make it easier to work with

1: Cut each of your four slices of brioche into four triangles, and arrange them in a layer on the base of the trifle dish. It’s okay if it doesn’t fit together like a perfect jigsaw or pufferfish sand sculpture, but try to keep it fairly evenly fanned out with no gaps. Pour over the 60ml white rum.

2: The fruit layer comes next, and is threefold. If using a fresh mango, peel and chop it into smallish pieces – around 1cm square, but whatever – and scatter it evenly over the rum-soaked brioche, scraping as much juice from the chopping board over as possible while you’re at it. If you’re using tinned mango, drain it and reserve 1/4 cup of the syrup, roughly chop and scatter the mango evenly over the brioche, and then pour over the syrup. Next, the two peaches — these, I slice thinly into half moons and fan out in a single even layer on top of the mango.

3: Now, if using fresh passionfruit: halve and scoop the pulp from five of your eight fruit, leaving the other three for the topping. Mix this pulp with the three tablespoons of sugar and spoon it over the peach layer. If using a jar of passionfruit pulp, just spoon over about six tablespoons, and don’t add any sugar but do squeeze over the juice of half a lime. We’re nearly there.

4: Whisk the 300ml cream until it starts to thicken just enough that when you drag the whisk through, faint trail marks are indented in its surface. Agitate the 250ml mascarpone briefly with a fork first so it’s not so solidified, then gently stir it into the cream with your whisk — it may look a little lumpy initially, but the two creams will combine if you carefully nudge them together. Dollop this mixture over the trifle and gently spread it into an even, thick layer.

5: Now! It is imperative that you let this sit in the fridge overnight. If you really, absolutely can’t, then so be it, but it simply won’t taste as good — the ingredients need time to merge. That being said, if it tastes good for you right here and now then I can’t be anything but delighted for you, if doubtful. (Also, supposing you’re making this early in the morning for pudding later that night — I think that should be enough of a time-lapse to be in the clear.)

6: Just before serving, half the remaining three passionfruit and spoon their pulp over the cream-covered trifle. Or, if using the jarred stuff, well, spoon over several generous spoonfuls to create haphazard golden rivers over the cream.

Serves 6 generously, though you could serve more if you use dinky coupe glasses as the vessel.

Note: If you can’t get hold of white rum or don’t wish to use alcohol, I would use the same quantity of apple juice, which is unobtrusively sweet and uplifts the other fruit flavours. If you do want to use white rum but don’t want to commit to a whole bottle, my recommendation is, as always, to buy one of those minibar-sized bottles, usually kept behind the counter, they’re a significantly cheaper way of adding a dash of this or that to a recipe. And finally, if you do want to commit to a full bottle then Havana Club 3YO is immensely reliable.

music lately:

All Night Party by A Certain Ratio, frantically dancefloorish yet dismally miserable, sometimes you really do need a song for that particular combination!

Every Planet We Reach is Dead by Gorillaz, makes me feel like I’m riding a carousel that’s moving backwards.

Another Hundred People, from Sondheim’s musical Company, performed by Anika Noni Rose in the 2011 all-star one-off concert — the rest of the song is broken up by book scenes but this is the main thrust of it. The way her voice glides into a vibrato on “explain” like a swan gently alighting upon the unbroken surface of a moonlit lake! That part when the horns pop in to say hi! This song is hard, hard work but you cannot sense it here!

PS: The people in Gaza still desperately need help, ReliefAid’s Gaza Appeal continues to work to deliver food and water so give it if you’ve got it; also, without wanting to bring this ugliness into my place I am nonetheless spiritually, morally, and righteously compelled to encourage you to sign this petition (currently at 73K+) to remove the violently erroneous charity status from Destiny’s Church, and then sign this similar, smaller parliamentary petition which probably has a better chance of carrying any weight; but there’s no harm in adding to the considerable noise of both.