Strawberry Lemon Trifle

What better way to end a nice dinner than with a super easy and delicious dessert?! Now, it’s very easy to go and grab a scoop of ice cream, but it’s almost just as easy to make this beautiful trifle. Basically, a trifle is assorted stuff layered into deliciousness. Once you master the technique you can use almost anything that sounds good to you. You can make individual servings in wine glasses as shown here, or use a glass trifle bowl. Typically you want to use something you can see through to see the pretty layers, but you can also pop it in a baking dish if that’s what you have.


For my trifle I layered pieces of homemade citrus pound cake, lemon cream and strawberries together. If you are in a time crunch, you can buy a good quality pound cake, already-made lemon curd, and cool whip and end up with a decent outcome.

I love lemon curd and use it in a lot of different desserts so I think it’s worth the effort of making myself, besides its super easy.

Lemon Curd

• 2 large eggs

• 6 tablespoons sugar

• 6 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

• 1/2 stick unsalted butter, cut into pieces

• 2 teaspoons (packed) lemon zest

Bring a pot of water up to a simmer.

In a bowl whisk the eggs and sugar together.

Place the bowl over the simmering water and add the lemon juice. Whisk constantly until curd has thickened and looks like pudding.

Remove bowl from water and stir in butter and zest.

At this point, you can put a piece of plastic laying on the curd to form a false skin and pop it in the fridge until you are ready to use it. To use the curd in the lemon cream you want it to be as cold as possible.

After the lemon curd is chilled, whip a cup of heavy whipping cream to stiff peaks and then gently fold in the curd.

To layer, start with cubed pound cake on bottom, top with the cream and then strawberries. Repeat with 1-2 more layers depending on how you are serving. This amount of curd is good for about 4 individual servings or one 8x8 baking dish.

The great thing about this dessert is its better if it can be made ahead the day before. It’s the perfect ending to a fun summer picnic or a fancy dinner party. Enjoy!

Italian Shrimp and Grits

Ever since I introduced polenta to my husband a few months ago, he’s been asking for it for dinner every night. Overjoyed for a starch other than roasted potatoes, I have been trying to incorporate it into a variety of meals. One of my favorite ways to prepare polenta is to stir in some herbed goat cheese, yum!


Tonight we decided to give something new a try, an Italian take on shrimp and grits. The polenta itself was just a normal recipe, I usually do half water or stock and half milk, and finish it off with some butter and grated Parmesan.

For the shrimp, I rendered some diced bacon. Pancetta would be more Italian, but that’s not what I had on hand. After removing the bacon, I sautéed some onion, garlic, and chili flakes in the remaining bacon fat. Then, I added a can of tomatoes and let the sauce reduce down a bit. About five minutes before the polenta was done, I added the shrimp to the tomato sauce. I usually shell my shrimp before adding them to dishes because I don’t like to be slowed down later during the eating/enjoying process. The shrimp shells, however, would offer a little more “shrimpy” flavor to the sauce. When the shrimp were done I just tore a little fresh basil into the sauce for garnish. Top the polenta with the tomato and shrimp sauce and there you go!

This is a really great quick and satisfying meal. You can have everything done in the time it takes you to make the polenta, about 25 minutes, unless, of course, you use the quick-cooking variety. (Insert “My Cousin Vinny” quote here). I think any recipe that starts off with some rendered bacon is probably going to be pretty darn good, and this definitely did not disappoint!