Firecracker's Chocolate Cake-Pudding-Cream Cheese-Chocolate Chip-Coconut Trifle

Okay, this is maybe a bit of a stretch to call this "Firecracker's" Recipe.  It was certainly inspired by her though.  We have a tradition in our house that Mom and Dad's birthday cakes are decorated by the kids.  I figure why put all the work into making a "pretty" or "themed" cake for me or Hubby when we don't really care a whole lot about a cake one way or the other...and the kids LOVE getting to decorate it.

Firecracker has become a pretty good cook.  She's mastered the cake-mix cake and has even moved on to making cookies from scratch...so for my birthday this year, we told her she was in charge of baking it.  It took her a few extra days to get around to it, but she baked it yesterday afternoon with Daddy supervising while I took a nap.  Then for some reason...who knows why kids come up with this...she decided to tear it up with a tooth pick, so by the time I saw the cake, it looked like this.

We could have made our typical 7-Minute Frosting and I'm sure it would have frosted just fine...7-Minute Frosting actually does a pretty good job of NOT stirring up crumbs...but the ripped up cake made me think of trifle...so we decided to make trifle.



I did some looking around on the internet and found a lot of delicious looking recipes...none of which did we have all the ingredients for.  I figured it's probably pretty hard to mess up trifle since it's pretty much layering of several delicious things.  I combined several ideas from different recipes, and we came up with our own version with the things we had in the cupboard and freezer.

So to all the thousands of trifle recipes on the internet, I'm adding:

Firecracker's Chocolate Cake-Pudding-Cream Cheese-Chocolate Chip-Coconut Trifle

which could also be called

Whatever-You-Find-in-the-Cupboard-and-Freezer-Trifle

Ingredients:
1-Prepared chocolate cake (We made ours from a cake mix.)
1-8 oz container Cool Whip, divided
1-3.9 oz package of Vanilla pudding mix
1 1/2 cups milk
6 oz cream cheese
1/4 cup sugar
1/8 tsp. almond flavoring
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Toppings to Sprinkle (I used coconut and mini-chocolate chips...other options could include crumbled up vanilla wafers, oreos, or graham crackers.)

Directions:

You start by making the chocolate cake...or having your 7-year old make it.  A lot of recipes I saw online used brownies instead of chocolate cake.

Vanilla pudding Layer:  Mix your vanilla pudding with 1 1/2 cups of milk, and whip until smooth.  (This was following the package directions, but using 1/2 cup less milk to make it thicker.)  Stir in half the Cool Whip until smooth.

Cream Cheese-Chocolate Layer:  Cream/whip 6 oz cream cheese, 1/4 cup of sugar, and 1/8 tsp almond flavoring.  Melt 1 cup of chocolate chips in your microwave until barely melted.  Add melted chocolate chips to cream cheese/sugar mixture and whip until thoroughly blended.  Stir in the other half of the cool whip until smooth.

Layering: 
1/4 of the chocolate cake
1/2 the vanilla pudding mixture
1/4 of the chocolate cake
1/2 the cream cheese/chocolate chip mixture
1/4 of the chocolate cake
1/2 the vanilla pudding mixture
1/4 of the chocolate cake
1/2 the cream cheese/chocolate chip mixture
Sprinkle the top with coconut and mini-chocolate chips.

Not the prettiest of trifles...but totally delicious.  We still have half of it leftover in the fridge.  If you read this soon enough, you're welcome to drop by and have some.

You could use pretty much any flavor pudding...or use white chocolate chips instead of semi-sweet mixed in with the cream cheese.  Several recipes I looked through used sweetened condensed milk to mix in with the pudding.

And if you're interested in having your kids decorate a birthday cake, you can see my post here.

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