Chocolate Trifle (Fight My Mother-in-Law for the Real Recipe)
She gave me this one. She will not give it to you. Don’t ask.
Prep time: However long a box cake mix takes, plus your patience for layering
Chill time: Overnight, if you have any self-control
Yield: One bowl of holiday chaos, serves a crowd
Ingredients:
- 2 boxes of your finest devil’s food cake mix (plus whatever the box tells you to add — eggs, oil, water, read the back, this isn’t the hard part)
- 1 box family size chocolate pudding (plus whatever milk it asks for)
- Cool Whip
- Heath toffee bits
Instructions:
- Make the cake. Both boxes. Follow the instructions on the back — I’m not retyping them, they’re right there.
- Let it cool to room temperature. This is not a suggestion. Piping hot cake touching Cool Whip is how you ruin a dessert and a friendship.
- Make the pudding. Family size, because this is not the moment for portion control. Follow the box. Let it set up in the fridge like it tells you to.
- Find a big glass bowl. Not because you need one, but because the whole point of this dessert is watching the layers through the glass. If you use an opaque bowl, what are we even doing here.
- Layer it: cake, Cool Whip, chocolate pudding, repeat, in whatever order makes you happy. There’s no wrong order. This isn’t that kind of recipe.
- Keep going until you run out of ingredients.
- Top it with Heath toffee bits. Generously. This isn’t the part to get shy about.
- Eat it now if you want. It’s good. But put it in the fridge overnight and eat it tomorrow, and you’ll understand why this recipe survives every holiday.
Notes:
- Yes, it’s a box cake mix and tub ingredients. No, I’m not sorry, and neither is my mother-in-law, who has been serving this for years.
- I made this once for a holiday potluck when I worked in a call center, and I caught grown adults licking the bowl. Y’all nasty. You know who you are.
- It looks pretty in the dish, period. It’s also just good, period. Sometimes that’s the whole recipe.
