Absolutely Incredible Raspberry Trifle

Sharing this recipe, I feel a bit like a traitor selling secrets about national security - yes, it's that good. My boyfriend's aunt has been making it for years, and every time she serves it my mouth does a little happy dance. It's a glorious mixture of light cake, rich cheesecake, and tart fresh fruit!

This year, she slipped the recipe in with our Christmas gift - to which I blurted out something along the lines of " this is the best present ever!" and immediately made everyone else in the room feel inferior. At Christmas time. Well done, me.

Had she known I was going to share the recipe online she may have thought twice about gifting it to me at all...

Anyways, it's too late now.

Unfortunately I was lacking a fancy bowl to use so I had to improvise with a giant glass beaker*

Carol's Fantastic Raspberry Trifle

1 Angel Food Cake

2 bricks of cream cheese (use lite, no one will know)

Lemon juice

1/2 - 1c sugar

500 mL whipping cream

Vanilla

Cocoa

600g Frozen raspberries

Make the angel food cake ahead of time and let it cool completely**

Thaw raspberries in a bowl with some sugar (about 1/4 cup - I like to keep them tart). I put mine in the refrigerator over night.

Beat the cream cheese until soft. Add lemon juice (fresh is best) to taste as well as some sugar (about 1/2 a cup).

In a second bowl, whip the cream until quite firm. Add vanilla (about a 1/4 tsp.) and sugar (about a 1/3 cup) to taste.

Gently fold 2/3 of the whipping cream into the cream cheese mixture. Reserve the remaining whipping cream for the top of the trifle.

Assembly: place a layer of angel food in the bottom of a serving dish. Top with a layer of cream cheese/whipped cream mixture and a layer of raspberries. Sprinkle with cocoa. Continue layering until you near the top of the bowl - finish with reserved whipping cream and sprinkle with cocoa.

Now this part is important - let the dessert sit for 10-12 hours if possible so all the flavors can mingle a bit. However don't let it sit too long or the bottom layer gets all mushy.

Also, the dessert will settle a bit, mine sunk at least half an inch, but now that you know ahead if time you won't panic like me.

My boyfriend claims he's had this dessert before with different fresh berries - as a raspberry purist I'm appalled. However, the idea of peaches and raspberries has been taunting me since that last bite 996 hours ago (give or take a minute) and I may be willing to move out of my comfort zone this summer.

Enjoy!

Calli

*I assure you that the beaker has never been used for experiments and was completely clean.

**You could buy a pre-made cake (easy but kind of careless) or make one from scratch (for those overachievers) however I prefer to use a boxed mix - It shows you care but not enough to deal with a hundred thousand egg whites.