A summer leftover, Chocolate muffin double almond trifle

Defy me if I´m wrong but who doesn’t like a celebration with chocolate? Everyone likes celebrations, right? We can celebrate any event special for us, it doesn’t have to be a national or universal occasion. The most important occasion for some people to celebrate is their birthdays, while others think that their anniversary is as important. So maybe it’s not right to put them in order according to their degree of importance. Celebration is good when you experience something meaningful for you. Personally, I don’t have many special days to celebrate. I just don’t like to limit celebrations to specific dates. You might think I’m a bit weird, but I don’t care about even my own birthday. Well, that is not entirely tue, I do like receiving presents or being together with my family or friends, but not on an arranged day. If someone wants to make a person happy,they don’t need a specific day, they can do it on any ordinary day when that person least expects it! For me, this is the real way of surprising someone.Casa rosada was asked to make a surprise birthday breakfast for our guests this week.
 I thought I must make something sweet for her. She must love chocolate, so it had to be something with chocolate! Ottolenghi´s Chocolate almond cup cakes I thought, topped with some brightly coloured chocolate beads that I had bought from the cake decorating shop festooned with a colourful array of iced gem biscuits.
Anyway to cut a long story short I slightly over filled my muffin cups and the filling spilled over and bequeathed me with some lovely chocolate trimmings which along with a couple of mutant muffins would go to make the base of a summer chocolate trifle.
Trifle is a great dessert and a way to use leftover cakes, brownies or muffins! As you all know wasting food is my biggest bugbear and I always try to find new ways to use up leftover foods. Since two of us can’t finish cakes, there are always some leftover cakes in our house. This makes things a lot easier. When you need to make something sweet in a quick way, it’s great to know that you have some leftover cake.
Leftover Chocolate muffin double amarguinha trifle
 I used my standard trifle recipe (Nigel Slater)but instead of amaretti cookies I used leftover chocolate muffins.The muffins already had almond licore (amarguinha) in them, so I soaked the  crumbled muffins in a few tablespoons more.The almond is technically the hard-shelled fruit of the almond tree, itself a member of the prunus family. This category of stone fruit encompasses trees and shrubs that produce edible fruit like apricots, plums, peaches and nectarines.My choice of fruit in the trifle was
therefore guided by this in order to give the trifle a kind of double almond hit.

455g/1lb apricots
2 cups of leftover chocolate muffins
6 tablespoons amarguinha,amaretto or other good quality almond liqueur
500g peaches or plums
250g mascarpone
2 free range eggs, separated
60g/2oz caster sugar
230g/8oz crême fraiche or thick double cream 

Halve the apricots, remove the stones and place the halves in a shallow pan of simmering water and cook for 4-5 minutes,until the tip of a knife will slide through them effortlessly. Drain and allow the fruit to cool.
Place the crumbled muffins in the bottom of a large glass bowl.Sprinkle over the almond liqueur.Purée half the apricots in a blender and rub through a sieve. Pour the apricot purée over the amaretti biscuits.
Scatter the remaining apricots and the rest of the fruit over the purée. Beat the mascarpone and the egg yolks in a bowl till creamy, beat in the sugar, then beat the egg whites until stiff and fold in gently.
Place the trifle in the fridge for at least 4 hours for the flavours to blend together. Spread the crême fraiche or cream over the top of the trifle.