A Very Hectic Weekend Deconstructed Trifle

This weekend has been very busy to say the least. On saturday Dylan had rugby trials for Essex so fingers, toes, eyes, knees in fact everything crossed.

While he was there I popped round to see my most beautiful friend Sarah and her family, including Jess my adorable godson .

Got back, straight up the motorway to collect Harley, (the gorgeous Grandchild) and then onto Sainsburys to get food shopping for the evening as I had 6 of my friends and 1 sister from New Zealand coming over for dinner.

As a thank you to them for being so fab (we've had a terrible time over the last 13 months and I don't know what i'd have done without the support of these wonderful people). By now it was 4pm, only 4 hours until they would all arrive expecting dinner cooked from scratch.

The house looked like it had been burgled (3 big boys and 1 baby boy will do this). Luckily i'd made the mini meringues and vanilla sponge at 7am so only 2 and a 1/2 courses left to complete, a flower arrangement to do and every room to tidy, with the boys untidying as I went !!!!!

Stress levels were rising along with my voice. The long and short, I got it all done, just, unfortunately I still looked like i'd been rolling around the rugby pitch when they arrived.  If my friends sister hadn't of been coming from NZ i'd probably not been so stressy but you always want new people to have a good 1st impression don't you?
                                              
DECONSTRUCTED TRIFLE

A nice vanilla sponge
Homemade strawberry jam ( slightly set)
softly whipped double cream
Fresh raspberries
mini meringues
mint leaves
framboise (raspberry liqueur)
Basically just cut little circles of sponge, pour a teaspoon of framboise over each.

Then layer on some lovely freshly made jam, onto lightly whipped cream,top each one with a small handful of Raspberries and meringues, finish with some lovely fresh mint leaves.

For starter I made the prawn linguine, that I blogged about a couple of weeks ago, just in  smaller portions, with the addition of some lemon zest.

Then it was Jamie O's 30min mustard chicken, Errrrr hello, took at least an hour, that boy must be taking some kind of rocket fuel, mind you I have to say, it was delish, and I have tried quite a few of his 30 min recipes, they have all been yummy, and easy to follow.

Both, along with my trifle went down very well. We had a lovely evening. At 2am I was clearing up and loading the dishwasher for the 4th time,as all needed to be cleared and pristine, as my brother and his girlfriend and Reg (THE Pest) dog were coming over at 10am for breakfast.