Red White and Blue Berry Trifle

Not that long ago, I had a conundrum.  I had some cupcakes leftover from an order.  They were vanilla cupcakes that tasted delicious but didn’t look so great because the cake was so moist the papers were coming off.  And plain vanilla cupcakes are something that are really easy for me to pass up…you know, since they are devoid of all peanut butter and chocolate.  So, what was I to do with these cupcakes?

Well, we were invited to our friends’ Dave and Kylie’s for lunch, and we were asked to bring a salad, which we did.  But I saw this as an opportunity to utilize the aforementioned delicious but peanut-butter-and-chocolate-lacking cupcakes.  The salad I made had strawberries and blueberries, so I decided to use the same fruit, along with the cupcakes, to make a trifle.

Trifles are just one of those things that are great to bring to a party because they always go over so well – they look really impressive and always taste great.  (And they’re actually pretty easy, but you don’t have to tell your hosts that.)  You can switch up the flavors by using different cakes or brownies, various fruits,  flavors of pudding, etc.  I have a killer trifle recipe that is all chocolate and uses brownies.  I’ll make that for you guys some time.

Side story: My mom made that chocolate trifle for our family one Easter, and my grandma asked her where she got it.  My mom told her she made it, to which my grandma replied, “No you didn’t.”   Now my mom’s a great cook, mind you, so it was not unusual for her to make something so delicious.  It just looked so beautiful, my grandma didn’t think it could have possibly been homemade.

Obviously, you won’t have misfit cupcakes lying around to make this trifle with.  Not to worry, you can make a regular old white cake in a 9 x 13 pan and that will be perfect.  You won’t need quite the whole cake.  Pound cake would work too.  This would be beautiful for fourth of July, with the red white and blue colors!

Very Berry Trifle

Ingredients:

• 9 x 13 white cake
• 1 pint strawberries, sliced
• 1 pint blueberries
• 1 5.1 oz box of instant vanilla pudding
• 1 1/2 cups of cold milk (I used skim)
• 1 16 oz container of whipped topping (I used lite)

Directions:

In a medium or large bowl, mix pudding mix and milk with whisk until pudding begins to thicken.  Set in refrigerator for at least 15 minutes if possible.   Fold half of the whipped topping into the pudding until just combined.  Do not stir the whipped topping into the pudding because you want the whipped topping to stay fluffy – you’re basically making a shortcut mousse.

In a trifle dish or clear bowl, crumble a little less than half of the cake into large chunks.  You want the bottom of the bowl to be completely covered and the cake to be maybe about an inch deep.  On top of the cake, layer strawberries, blueberries, half of the pudding mousse, and 1/3 of the whipped topping.  Repeat layers starting again with cake.  Decorate the top with more berries.

You can put in as many berries as you like, but we did not use the entire pint of either the strawberries or blueberries.  You can also use more whipped topping if you like. 🙂