Ingredients

Step by step

1. First make the gingerbread men. Preheat the oven to 200°C, fan 180°C, gas 6. In a small pan, melt together the butter, sugar and syrup. Sieve the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ginger into a bowl and mix in the melted ingredients to make a soft dough.
2. Roll the dough out between 2 sheets of baking paper to about 5mm thick. Transfer to a baking tray on the baking paper, leaving on the top sheet, and bake for 10 minutes. While the dough bakes, get your gingerbread men cutter ready. When the dough comes out of the oven, immediately cut out as many gingerbread men as you can. As the dough cools, this will get harder, but it will still be possible. Keep some of the off-cuts to use to decorate the trifle. Once the gingerbread men are completely cool decorate with writing icing.
3. Make the swiss roll. Turn the oven down to 190°C, fan 170°C, gas 5. Grease and line a 20cm x 30cm swiss roll tin with baking paper, then grease the baking paper. Put the golden syrup, treacle and butter in a small pan and heat gently until melted together. Set aside to cool a little.
4. Put the eggs and sugar in a large bowl and whisk using an electric hand whisk until fluffy, doubled in size and light in colour and when you remove the beaters they leave a ribbon trail on top of the mixture for a couple of seconds. This will take about 10 minutes. Sieve over the flour, baking powder and ginger, then pour the melted butter mixture around the sides of the bowl so that it trickles down into the whisked eggs. Gently fold together, then pour into the prepared tin. Bake for 12-14 minutes until springy.
5. While the sponge cooks, lay a piece of baking paper out on your work surface and sprinkle with the caster sugar. When the sponge is baked, remove from the oven and immediately turn out onto the sugar-sprinkled paper. Then, using a small serrated knife, score the surface of the sponge, about 1.5cm from the edge, along one of the long sides. Using the paper underneath, roll up from this side. Leave wrapped in the paper on a wire rack until completely cool.
6. For the buttercream, in the small bowl of a food processor whiz the stem ginger with the syrup, then add the butter and whiz to combine, and finally whiz in the icing sugar. Once the sponge is cool, unroll and spread the buttercream over the top before rolling back up again. Slice into about 20 pieces and arrange around the bottom of a trifle dish. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons of syrup from the stem ginger jar.
7. Put the gelatine in a bowl, cover with cold water and leave to soften for 5 minutes. Meanwhile heat the custard until just hot. Once the gelatine is softened, stir it into the custard, then leave to cool, covering the surface with clingfilm to stop a skin forming. Once the custard is cool, but not set, pour it into the trifle dish over the swiss rolls and leave to set in the fridge for about 2 hours.
8. Once the custard has set and just before serving whip the cream with the icing sugar and cream liqueur, if using, until just holding soft peaks. Spoon over the custard and decorate with crushed gingerbread offcuts and the gingerbread men.
   
   More trifle ideas:
   
   Chocolate Orange trifle 
   
   Tiramisu trifle