Black Forest Trifle

In the midst of our busy week with all the extra kiddos – I read that it was National Cupcake Day.

Being the wonderful person that I am – I knew it would be a tragedy for all those precious children to miss such an important holiday.

(What – you don’t believe me?! Okay, okay – so the real reason is that I’m a confirmed chocoholic and will use any excuse to make some chocolate!)

I used a new recipe for the cupcakes and surprised the kids at supper. They were really good! The frosting – however – was not. I fudged a little – okay a lot – on the frosting because I didn’t want to use the package and half of cream cheese the original recipe called for.

This recipe made a lot of cupcakes and those kids chowed down on them the first day. Slowed down a little on the second and pretty soon I noticed that no one even opened them.

It wasn’t until after the extra kids returned home and we were putting things away that I discovered why.

I opened the cupcake container and discovered that the frosting had dissolved and puddled at the bottom. I was left with 9 sad naked cupcakes with a few colored sprinkles on top.

Major frosting fail.

My first thought was “Just chuck them out to the chickens”.

But then my frugal side kicked in.  There was no way I was going to waste all that yummy chocolate.

So with Buddy to assist me – we turned the massive cupcake disaster into a fabulous Black Forest Trifle.

We started by crumbling half of the sorry looking cupcakes in the bottom of my pretty glass bowl. (I’m still on the look-out for a real trifle bowl!)

Then we took 2 cups of frozen cherries from the freezer (remember when we picked them with friends back in June?).

I thawed them, added 1-1/2 cups of sugar, 1/2 cup of water and 2 tablespoons of corn starch and brought them to a boil. When they were slightly thickened, we poured half of them over the brownies and let it cool. That thickened juice just soaked right up into the cupcakes!

Meanwhile we mixed up a small box of instant chocolate pudding.

When the cherry/brownie mixture was cool enough that it wouldn’t melt the pudding, we put half the pudding down followed by a layer of Cool Whip.

We then repeated with the layers in the same order – cupcakes, cherries, chocolate pudding and Cool Whip.

Yum. Yum. Double Yum.

Those poor rejected cupcakes were transformed into a delicious dessert that disappeared within 24 hours.

Waste not, want not – that’s my motto – especially when there’s chocolate involved! 🙂

I’ve linked this post up with Chocolate Friday over at Stop and Smell the Chocolates and with Foodie Friday over at Designs by Gollum.