Red White and Blue Trifle

One of my favorite desserts to make on a patriotic, American holiday is a red white and blue trifle. It’s super easy to pull together, with fresh sliced strawberries, blueberries and pieces of vanilla cake. The white ingredient is whipped cream, which I make from scratch. Serve it all up in a transparent trifle bowl to really wow the crowd.

Red White and Blue Trifle

Last year, I made this red white and blue trifle for a 4th of July potluck. It is one of the easiest summer desserts. In addition to a July 4th Independence Day party, you can easily use it for Memorial Day or Labor Day barbecues, or even President’s Day in February, if you celebrate.

This recipe includes store-bought elements as well as homemade ones. It’s up to you if you want to go the same route I did. That is, making a boxed cake mix for the cake portion and then homemade whipped cream for some of the filling. Traditionally, you would make a trifle with angel food cake — store bought or a cake mix — but since I didn’t have any angel foods on hand, I went with a regular yellow cake mix.

Because there are so many moving parts with this patriotic trifle dessert, this recipe has two recipe card sections. One, the ingredients for the cake that you add to the trifle dish. And then, two, the ingredients for homemade whipped cream.

Trifle Cake Ingredients

Here is a pictorial outline for making the boxed cake mix for this trifle recipe and then the trifle ingredients themselves, including the berries I used.

Step-by-Step Instructions

First, you need to make the yellow boxed mix cake and get it in the oven. So preheat your oven to 350 F or whatever temperature the box instructions say. Spray the baking dish or cake pan you’re going to use with a non-stick cooking spray, such as Pam, so the batter won’t stick. 13 X 9 Le Creuset cake pan casserole dish.

Follow the box instructions for mixing ingredients — water (or milk, if you want to make your box cake mix better), oil (or butter), eggs and the cake mix. Then, pour in your baking dish or cake pan.

Place cake batter in the oven to bake.

Set a timer and bake according to instructions. Test for doneness. Then remove the baked cake from the oven and let it cool.

In the meantime, make your homemade whipped cream, if you haven’t already done so. Once the cake has cooled, start cutting it in cubes to use in the trifle. Set aside.

Wash and cut strawberries and blueberries that you’ll be using in this red, white and blue trifle. Now it’s time to start assembling your trifle. At this point you’re going to be alternating layers of fruit, whipped cream and cake chunks. I started with a layer of strawberries, then added a layer of cake. In retrospect, I should have started with the cake layer. Oh, well.

Next, I added a layer of whipped cream. If you don’t want to make homemade whipped cream, you can always use store-bought whipped cream in a can or, if you prefer, Cool-Whip.

After that, a layer of blueberries.

Then more whipped cream and cake.

And so on until you get to the top layer, which I recommend starting with whipped cream, then doing a circle of strawberries with blueberries on the inside. It’s just so pretty.

If your trifle bowl has a top like mine does, make sure you’ve left enough room with that top layer to get the top onto it.

Store in the refrigerator until you’re ready to serve the trifle to guests or take it on the road with you to your holiday potluck or barbecue cookout or another party celebration. I’m confident you’re going to impress the heck out of the people who serve themselves some of this red, white and blue trifle.

At that aforementioned 4th of July barbecue potluck, I had so many people ask me for the recipe for the cake in the trifle. When I told them it was a boxed cake mix, they were floored and couldn’t believe how delicious it was.

Notes

As mentioned earlier, traditionally you might make a berry trifle dessert with cut up pound cake or angel food cake. It’s chef’s choice which version you choose plus whatever ingredients you happen to have on hand. In this instance, I had yellow cake mix in the pantry so that’s what I used.

When making the homemade whipped cream, use heavy cream or whipping cream. You may see either or both in the refrigerated case or section of your grocery store. Both will work. If you want to make a dairy-free version of whipped cream, you can substitute the cow’s milk heavy or whipping cream with coconut cream.

Don’t want to make whipped cream from scratch? No problem. You can use a store-bought whipped topping or even instant vanilla pudding mix for the inside layers of the cake. I do think that a whipped cream-like finish for the top really works.

As far as the berries for this trifle, I chose blueberries and fresh strawberries. However, you could add other kinds of berries for the color theme. Raspberries could be the red portion of a red, white and blue patriotic dessert. You could even use blackberries in place of blueberries. However, both raspberries and blackberries tend to be seedy, which is why I prefer not to use them in a smooth dessert like this one. But, as I said earlier, the ingredients you choose are the chef’s choice.