Chocolate Trifle
With Mixed Fruits

Chocolate Trifle is a delicious, quick and easy dessert made with instant chocolate pudding, ladyfingers, bananas, pineapple and cherries, then topped with whipped cream.

Chocolate Trifle Recipe

• 2 boxes Instant Chocolate Pudding mix
  
  
• 24 ladyfingers cookies or 48 vanilla wafers
  
  
• 3 large bananas
  
  
• 1 cup fresh pineapple cubes (I use canned pineapple chunks)
  
  
• 2 tablespoons pineapple juice
  
  
• 5 oz. Maraschino Cherries (1/2 10 oz.jar)
  
  
• 2 tablespoons Maraschino Cherry juice
  
  
• 1 recipe Homemade Whipped Cream or 6-8 oz. frozen whipped topping, thawed
  
  

Mix pudding with milk according to the directions on box.


Set it aside.

Line the bottom of a trifle bowl, or other glass bowl that holds at least 2 quarts (8 cups) with half of the lady fingers or vanilla wafers.

Drain the pineapple.

Sprinkle 2 tablespoons juice over the cookies.

Lay the chunks on each of the cookies. (2 chunks for ladyfingers and 1 for vanilla wafers).

Slice banana in crosswise slices the thickness of the cookies.

Place a slice of banana on each pineapple piece.

Spread half of the chocolate pudding over the bananas. 

Place remainder of the cookies over the layer of pudding.

Drain the cherries.

Sprinkle the cherry juice over the cookies.

Place a layer of fruit (cherries, additional bananas and additional pineapple, if any) over the second layer of cookies.

Spread remainder of pudding over the fruits.

Top all with whipped cream.

Smooth top and garnish additional cherries, if preferred.

Chill uncovered for at least 3 hours before serving.

This allows the cookies to soften.

Note: If you prefer a harder cookie with your pudding, omit the fruit juices.

However, the fruit juices add an awesome, unique flavor to the dish.

Your homemade from scratch Trifle is delicious made with various flavored puddings... banana, butterscotch, coconut, lemon and other flavors you and your family can choose.

You can also substitute various, well drained fruits in your trifle.

Strawberries are super delicious and possess a brilliant color in trifle recipes. 

Use sliced fresh or frozen strawberries in the trifle and place several whole strawberries over the whipped cream topping.

Another delicious and beautiful variation of this recipe is to use sliced strawberries and whole blueberries in the Trifle and on top of the whipped cream arrange a few whole strawberries and blueberries.

Patriotic colors... Red, White and Blue!

Vanilla Trifle Recipe

Soft Pudding:

• 1/4 cup sugar
  
  
• 3 tablespoons corn starch
  
  
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
  
  
• 2 1/2 cups whole milk
  
  
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix together the sugar, cornstarch and salt in a mixing bowl.

Slowly stir in the milk.

Cook in a saucepan over medium heat, while continuing to stir the mixture and it thickens. 

Stir in the vanilla extract and set it aside to cool

Cut the yellow sponge cake or pound cake into 1 inch cubes.

Set them aside.

Assemble Trifle:

Place a layer of the cake cubes in the bottom of the trifle bowl.

Next, add a layer of vanilla pudding. 

Can use Banana Pudding Recipe, but leave out the cookies and topping.

Use a teaspoon to allow some of the pudding to drain down into the cake cubes.

Slice fresh or frozen and thawed whole strawberries, crosswise.

Repeat all layers again and top the trifle with Homemade Whipped Cream.

Chill a few hours in the refrigerator until cold, before serving.

History Of Trifle Recipe

Trifles originated in America.

The first one made contained only 4 ingredients... cream, sugar, ginger and rosewater.

Since I can only imagine how they cooked it back then, to make it edible instead of drinkable.

I would guess that they cooked it over a fire until most of the liquid evaporated and it thickened.

Historically, trifles were made using left over sponge cake soaked with wine or other drinking alcohol to soften the cake.

Early American recipes called for several pounds of flour for making cakes.

That would seem to me to create an abundance of leftovers.

Today, trifle recipes have evolved to include a variety of ingredients, such as fruit and many have eliminated the use of alcohol, replacing it with fruit juices.

For fun, I have included below, the first trifle recipe to appear in an American published cook book by an American.

Fill a difh with bifcuit finely broken, rufk fpiced cake, wet with wine, then pour a good boil'd cuftard, (not too thick) over the rufk, and put a fyllabub over that; garnish with jelly and flowers.

Sure am glad I do not have to use that Old Fashioned Recipe.

A cook book called American Cookery, authored by Amelia Simmons, an orphan and American colonist, was published in 1798, containing an improved version of the Trifle recipe.

Subsequent cook books kept being published when John Molland published a book called The Art Of Cookery featuring garnishes of candied fruits, nuts, seeds or rose leaves.

He said the garnishes gave the trifle elegance.

Related Pages

Chocolate Banana Split Pudding Recipe

Return to Pudding Recipes

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