Well, of all the dinners we enjoyed, that last one was by far our favorite. And to be honest, it was not because of the main course (I cannot even remember what I had) but because of the dessert. We had an Italian Cream Cake that was positively spectacular. I have never tried such a wonderful dessert or been so impressed by something that delicious!
Well, we got right to work when we got on that flight back home and found this amazing trifle dessert that perfectly resembles the Roman kind! Check out what our friends over at Love Foodies had to say about this:
“Layers of classic fluffy Italian Cream Cake combined with delicious layers of creamy pudding, pecans and coconut will bring smiles to everyone who eats this!”
This dessert brought me smiles both in Rome and back home!
Ingredients
The Cake:
1/4 cup room temperature Land O’ Lakes Butter
1/4 cup Butter flavored Crisco shortening (or just regular butter)
1 1/4 cups Domino Sugar
3 medium Eggland’s Eggs
1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
dash of Salt
1 1/4 cups Gold Medal All Purpose Flour
1/2 cup Land O’ Lakes Buttermilk
3/4 cups Coconut shredded
1/2 cup chopped Pecans
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
The Pudding:
1 small box of French Vanilla Jell-O Instant Pudding
1 3/4 cups McArthur milk
1 eight oz container of Mascarpone Cheese
1 can La Lechera sweetened condensed milk
1 small container of Cool Whip or whipped topping.
The Topping:
1 sixteen ounce package of shredded coconut -toasted
1 1/2 cups of chopped pecans -toasted.
Instructions
Make the cake:
Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and flour a 9 inch cake pan. (if you have any batter left over, simply pop in a couple of cup cake liners).
Cream butter and butter flavored shortening until smooth. Add sugar and mix well. Add eggs one at a time, just until the yellow disappears. Mix for about 30 seconds more.
Combine flour, baking soda and dash of salt. Set aside.
Add 1/3 of the flour mixture (above) to the creamed mixture. Mix well. Now add 1/2 of the buttermilk. Mix well. Add another 1/3 of the flour mixture, rest of the buttermilk, then last of the flour mixture, mixing well after each addition. (i.e. flour, buttermilk, flour, buttermilk, flour) Add the vanilla & mix well.
Stir in the remaining ingredients, coconut and pecans. Pour evenly into the greased and floured cake pan.
Bake at 350 F for 20-25 minutes until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cool for 10 minutes and remove from pans. Let cool completely.
Make the pudding:
Mix the Instant pudding with the milk and allow to set. This should only take 5 – 10 minutes.
In a separate bowl, mix the mascarpone and sweetened condensed milk well until smooth. The instant pudding should now be set; add this to the mascarpone mixture and mix well. Now fold in the Cool Whip and refrigerate until ready to assemble.
Build the Trifle:
Break up the cake (you can just use your hands) so it is in small pieces or large crumbs).Then assemble and layer starting with cake, pudding, coconut and pecans, repeat 1-2 times. If you end with pudding and toasted coconut sprinkled on top you can cover with plastic and it comes off fairly clean.
USE RED NEXT PAGE LINK BELOW
NEXT PAGE >>
Quick Tip: (if you don’t have buttermilk on hand, take 1/2 cup whole milk and add 1 teaspoon white vinegar or lemon juice)
Thanks again to Love Foodies for this amazing recipe.