Recipe: Quick Strawberry Trifles — Dessert Recipes from The Kitchn |Cooking With Amanda

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Recipe: Quick Strawberry Trifles — Dessert Recipes from The Kitchn

Remember these Easter egg cakes I made last week? Well, I had a container full of pound cake scraps sitting in the freezer that I didn't want to waste, and cake pops were too laborious for a weeknight. Enter a few frozen strawberries that had been sitting around for a while, and my new favorite weeknight dessert was born.

Trifles are like the garbage disposal of desserts (tasty analogy, huh?) — you can throw just about anything in them. Leftover cake, crumbled cookies, fruit, nuts, chocolate sauce, jam ... just layer them in a glass, and the composed whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.

If you're ever cleaning out your fridge, freezer, and pantry, keep a trifle in mind. You don't need cake scraps. Leftover birthday cake slices? Half a batch of brownies? Sugar cookies? Those will all work with a little fruit and whipped cream.

In fact, these are the perfect way to use scraps from my yearly tradition of Easter egg cakes! When you shave away all those scraps from each cake loaf, don't forget to save them in the freezer and use them later for this.

→ The cutest Easter cakes: How To Make Easter Egg Cakes

Tester's Notes

I think of these individual trifles as the dessert that comes to the rescue time and time again. It's my answer on nights when I'm craving something sweet, and more interesting than a few cookies or a scoop of ice cream. It's my solution when I have friends over at the last minute and need an easy dessert, fast. Trifle is my dessert crutch, and a really good one at that.

If I have them, I always opt for using fresh berries. Maybe even a few slices of banana. However, if fresh fruit is scarce, I can always rely on finding frozen fruit in the freezer. Mixed with chunks of sweet cake and whipped cream, it's just as good.

- Kelli, March 2015