Triple Berry Trifle

As I said in my previous post, I used seven cups of milk to make three different puddings!  If I did not think wasting was a big deal, I would have just chucked all that pudding away after I did my sensory evaluation on them.  I mean, seven cups of milk, people!  Do you know how much milk costs these days?  Have you noticed an increase in your grocery bill, in general?  Oy!  Look at those gas prices!  Anyway, I digress but you get the picture--I didn't want the puddings to go to waste.

So, I decided to make a berry trifle and use the pudding as the creamy custard layer.  I used my hand mixer to blend together the instant and cook & serve puddings that I had made to make them one homogeneous mixture.  

I ended up making a fabulous pound cake to be the cake layer for this trifle.  And where did I get the recipe?  Well, of course I used Monet's French Pound Cake recipe, adapted from Joanne Chang's Flour book :-)  The cake was scrumptious, Monet!  

I apologize that I forgot to take pictures during the layering process; I was too engrossed in the process!  However, trifles are super easy to make.  In the past, I've used whipped cream for my creamy layer.  Because I was too lazy to go buy heavy cream, I did not use any this time.  However, I was going to whip some cream up to stiff peaks (not sweetening it) and then fold that into the pudding mix.  I thought this would lighten up the pudding as well as bring down the cloyingly sweet flavor it brought out.  I didn't do it but it's still a good idea!

I used blueberries, blackberries, and strawberries for my berries.  I actually macerated the strawberries with some sugar and also added the zest and juice of one lemon to liven everything up.  To get some extra fruit in, I also sliced up ripe (but not too ripe) bananas for a layer of their own.  

Trifles can be fairly inexpensive to put together.  That's a big yay.  However, an even bigger yay is the reception you'll receive for bringing one to a party.  Trifles make huge impressions on people and are usually big hits.  You can customize them to whatever you like.  The last trifle I made was for Thanksgiving 2006 and it was a pumpkin trifle: cubed, homemade pumpkin cake amidst layers of whipped cream.  YUM!