Trifle Recipe?

My trifle is similar. I make a chocolate cake (you can use Duncan Hines Devil Food mix, if you like) in two 8 or 9″ layers (depending on the size of my trifle bowl). I freeze them until very firm but not completely solidly frozen, then slice them in half horizontally, so I now have 4 layers of chocolate cake. I make the chocolate pudding with the whip (2 pks pudding to three cups pareve milk or whip), and either whip another Haddar whip together with a vanilla package of pudding, or flavor it with rum extract and just whip it up as is. I take a box of Viennese crunch (like Shufra’s), seal it in a large ziploc bag and bang it with a hammer until it is coarsely crunched. Then I take one layer of cake and put it in the trifle bowl, pressing it into the walls of the bowl so it comes up slightly, throw on a layer of chocolate whip, then sprinkle on a layer of crunch, then a layer of vanilla, then more crunch, then the second layer of cake,always pushing down slightly on the cake layer, to force the edges of the whip and crunch to go slightly up the side, which looks so pretty. Then more chocolate whip, crunch, vanilla whip more crunch, third layer of cake, etc. The last thing should be a layer of vanilla whip covered with a layer of crunch on top. I put saran wrap to cover it then put it in the freezer until a half hour before serving. Freeze ti for several hours initially, or overnight. This is a spectacular looking and tasting dessert.

The crunch is Viennese crunch, no recipe, ya gotta buy it. it is a combination of chopped almond or hazelnut-covered toffee, I guess. So if you are of a mind to make your own toffee and cover it with chopped nuts, I think you’re better off buying it ready made. Some people use Heath Bars (?), but whatever it’s called, I think those are milchig.

I actually used to use a Duncan Hines mix, because the trifle assembly takes time, and it was just one less thing to do. I used to have an amazing from scratch devil’s food cake that I made for many years, but the DH cake mix tasted almost exactly like it, and I potchked with enough things that I cooked and baked from scratch, that this didn’t have to be one of them. The irony is that nowadays I have to do everything for my family from scratch again, because of a severe allergy to nuts and seeds that a family member has, so I cannot use most of the prepared mix items.

Coffee Fan (so am I a coffee fan, but it has to be real coffee, unadulterated by flavorings, just coffee with half and half and sugar-free sweetener for me), you will LOVE the viennese crunch. It is amazing in a trifle, better than crushed cookies. You already have chocolate CAKE in the recipe,so why add cookies, too?

Yasher koach!!!! 🙂