Good afternoon, savvy savers! Today’s recipe is for one of my families favorites, my Spring and Summer Neapolitan Trifle! I can make this dessert from ingredients solely from the Dollar Tree, use frozen cake, cupcake, and cookie scraps crumbled to save money, and aside from the berries which I often buy on buy-one-get-one-free sales from Winn-Dixie, I can make this dessert for under $4.00, which consists of fourteen 1 cup servings. The Trifle dish itself was purchased at Walmart for $4.98! This is a favorite recipe, and one that I find works best made the night before, which allows the juice, pudding, and layering-medium of choice to meld together!
Neapolitan Trifle Pudding Ingredients:
10 cake slices, or cupcake crumbles (6 cups of crumbles, if used)
1 lg. container (12 oz.) whipped topping
2 lg. pkgs. vanilla instant pudding
2 pts. fresh or frozen strawberries
1/4 c. maraschino cherry juice
Maraschino cherries & pecans, or cookie toppings; on this trifle I used Breyer’s chocolate sauce from the Dollar Tree!
How to make Trifle Pudding:
1) If using fresh strawberries, hull, wash, slice and add sweetener to taste; a good rule of thumbs for making a simple fruit glaze is one tablespoon of water to 1/4 cup sweetener. Once the fruit is glazed, let stand ten minutes.
2) Line a trifle bowl with cake slices, or cupcake crumbles, if that’s what you have on hand.
3) Make the vanilla pudding according to instructions on the package; add 1 tablespoon cherry juice.
4) Sprinkle the cookies, lady fingers, cake slices, or cupcake crumbles with maraschino cherry juice, then put a layer of pudding, strawberries and whipped topping.
5) Repeat step 4 with a second layer and end with the whipped topping.
6) Arrange quartered strawberries on the top of the trifle, seed-side out.
7) Add chocolate sauce around the strawberries; the sauce will spread out.
8) Refrigerate to chill before serving.
9) Enjoy!