The Best Easter Trifle Dessert

The Best Easter Trifle Dessert is layer after layer of flavor. The bright and festive layers consist of strawberry cake, vanilla pudding, Funfetti vanilla cake morsels, pound cake, graham crackers, cream cheese and Cool Whip. The trifle is topped off with Whoppers Mini Robin Eggs.

If you are looking for the perfect easy dessert to make for Easter, then look no further. This Easter Trifle is a showstopper. It’s as beautiful and colorful as it is delicious. Our Easter Trifle has layers of different colors and flavors. The bright colorful layers give fabulous Easter egg vibes. This is a fun dessert to make so the kiddos will be happy to get involved.

Easter Sundays were always a big deal to my Nana and she hosted every year. I like Easter a lot because to me, it feels like more of a low maintenance holiday. I don’t go crazy with decorating or gift purchasing. It’s just more simple and feels like a holiday that’s just warm and about being surrounded by family.

I love putting together my own Easter baskets from scratch that are tailored to my kids and my nephew. Dyeing eggs is always fun but I’ve honestly slacked on it the last few years with the little ones. Maybe we’ll bring it back this year. Quite some time ago, I began doing Easter egg hunts. It started with my oldest, Aidan and my nephew, Logan. However, at the time, I lived in an especially small apartment. Not much room for “hunting”. So I would do an Easter egg treasure hunt. I would make up rhyming clues from one treasure to the next and the boys loved it.

Once we bought a house, the yard afforded me the opportunity to actually hide the eggs to be hunted. That’s been a lot of fun the last few years. I hide a ton of eggs with candy and cash and the kids love it. The last few years we’ve added two other hunters with my Dylan and Vivianna.

This dessert is easy to make and assemble. The somewhat time consuming part involves coloring each of the different layers and getting them to be your desired shade. For this, I prefer using gel food coloring because I find the colors to be more vivid. I don’t like adding a lot of food coloring to things and the gel is a concentrated amount so you can use less.

Easter Sunday is one of those great holidays where everyone brings a special dessert or two. Our dessert table selection is almost as large as the dinner spread itself. Easter Trifle is an excellent and budget friendly dessert. It easily serves a crowd. My favorite thing about a trifle is that they are so incredibly easy to make. Yet, they look incredibly fancy and like they took you forever to make. A trifle is always something that everybody oohs and aahs at when they see it.

Dessert is always the best part of any holiday celebration. Although I do love my sister-in-law, Natasha’s charcuterie boards more than life itself. She lets me keep the leftovers of that and I give her the leftovers of her favorite Green Bean Casserole. It’s a win-win! And no Easter celebration would be complete without Orange Glazed Carrots, Potatoes Au Gratin, Creamed Corn and Wild Rice Stuffing.

Substitutions/Variations

Strawberry cake mix: I like the pink color that comes from this cake mix but of course, you can use whatever you like. White cake mix is an excellent option and you can dye that whatever color you want to use for your trifle. Funfetti is a fun option for this dessert. The box that I made for the photos in this recipe is strawberry funfetti flavor.
Vanilla instant pudding: The light color of this pudding makes it easy and ideal for dyeing festive Easter colors. You could also use cheesecake, white chocolate, coconut cream or Oreo to easily dye. Banana pudding or pistachio offer great flavor to the trifle and those are already great bright shades of color straight from the box.
Toll House Funfetti Vanilla Cake Morsels: I find these at Walmart. You can easily find them online. I love these baking chips. They really do taste exactly like vanilla funfetti cake. If you aren’t able to find these, white chocolate chips, green mint chocolate chips or festive rainbow chips would work just as well.
Plain pound cake: For convenience sake, I just buy a store bought pre-made plain pound cake for this trifle. You can find these in the frozen section of your grocery store as well. Of course, you could bake another cake for this layer if you would like. You could also substitute the pound cake for Golden Oreos of Vanilla Wafers.
Graham Crackers: I just stick with good old classic Graham Crackers for this layer. If you don’t have them, you can skip this layer. Or you could crush up some Vanilla Wafers or Golden Oreos for this layer instead.
Whoppers Mini Robin Eggs: I love the colorful look of these for the top of the trifle. You could add to the Whoppers Mini Robin Eggs by laying down some edible grass to resemble a bird’s nest and then lay the eggs over the top. Here’s where you can get very creative because there are so many adorable different Easter themed candies that you could use on the top. You could use Peeps or Cadbury Eggs. Reese’s, Jelly Beans, Rice Krispies, Oreos and so many more different companies make all kinds of fun and festive special Easter candy variations.

What is a trifle?

A trifle is a layered dessert. I first encountered the term trifle when I was a young tween watching Friends. If you’re a fan, then you know what I’m talking about. Our sweet Rachel is trying to make the only Thanksgiving dessert. She is going for a traditional English trifle. However, the pages in the cookbook get stuck together and she makes half an English Trifle and half a Shepherd’s Pie. It’s a classic. Rest assured, this recipe will not come out tasting like feet.

Should you find yourself in need of an easy to throw together, last minute dessert, then a trifle will be your bestie. If you need to keep it extremely basic and simple, layer cake or cookies, pudding and Cool Whip. That’s all. It will look fancy and beautiful and people will be stunned at the sight of it. It does not get more simple than a good trifle.

Serving The Best Easter Trifle Dessert

This is a great dessert because it’s fairly compact if you’ll be traveling with it. A glass bowl is probably better than a trifle dish if you’ll be transporting the dessert to your Easter celebration. Though compact, a trifle should easily serve 10-12 guests.

You could instead opt to prepare and serve your Easter trifle in clear individual dessert cups or Mason jars. Simply add smaller amounts of each layer into the cups or jars.

Can I make the trifle ahead of time?

Yes! I suggest making this the night before. That will give it time to set in the refrigerator. Plus, who wants to be doing anything extra on Easter? Nobody. You’re busy enough so do yourself a favor and get this thing assembled the day prior.

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350°. Prepare and bake the strawberry cake mix according to package directions. Allow to cool completely.

Make the 2 boxes of instant vanilla pudding according to package directions. Make each box separately in two medium mixing bowls. The pudding needs about 20 minutes to firm and set in the fridge.

Break apart the cooled strawberry cake and layer the bottom of a clear bowl or trifle dish with it. Once all of the cake is in the bowl, pack it down.

Take one bowl of vanilla pudding and add a few drops of gel yellow food coloring and stir to reach your desired color. Stir to blend. Spoon the yellow vanilla pudding on top of the strawberry cake. Spread over the cake in an even layer.

Add Toll House Funfetti Vanilla Cake Morsels evenly over the yellow vanilla pudding. Break apart the store bought plain pound cake. Cover the Funfetti Morsels with the cake.

Take the other bowl of vanilla pudding and add a few drops of gel green food coloring and stir to reach your desired color. Spoon the green vanilla pudding on top of the plain pound cake. Spread over the cake in an even layer.

Crush about 6 Graham Crackers. Cover the green vanilla pudding layer with the Graham Cracker crumbs.

In a medium mixing bowl, add cream cheese and 8 ounces Cool Whip. Using an electric mixer, beat for about 2 minutes until fully combined. Add a few drops of gel purple food coloring and combine to beat with mixer to reach your desired color. Spread the cream cheese/Cool Whip layer over the Graham Cracker crumbs.

In another mixing bowl, add 8 ounces Cool whip. Add a few drops of gel blue food coloring. Mix with an electric mixer to reach your desired color. Spread the Cool Whip over the purple cream cheese/Cool Whip layer.

Top the Easter Trifle with Whoppers Mini Robin Eggs to decorate.

Hungry for more desserts?

• Nana’s “Better Than Sex” Pineapple Cake is a moist yellow boxed cake smothered in a cool whip and cream cheese frosting and topped with succulent pineapple and maraschino cherries.
• Strawberry Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting is a no-fuss way to turn a strawberry boxed cake mix into something unique and wonderful. The moist cake will be topped with a frosting whipped together from cream cheese and Cool Whip. Fresh strawberries and red sugar sprinkles put the finishing touches on a simple, yet beautiful cake.
• Easy Chocolate Dirt Cake (Mud Bucket) is heavenly layers of chocolate on chocolate. Chocolate cake, chocolate pudding, chocolate syrup and mini chocolate chips will satisfy the sweetest sweet tooth. A topping of Cool Whip and crushed Oreo Cookies adds the perfect finishing touch.
• Reese’s Ice Cream Sandwich Cake is an extremely easy to make and no bake dessert. You will taste delicious layers of ice cream sandwich, vanilla bean ice cream, Hershey’s chocolate syrup, Reese’s peanut butter topping, cool whip and Reese’s cups.
• Easy 20-Minute Chocolate Peanut Butter Croissants are buttery and heavenly. You would never believe that these come together in under 20 minutes and with only 4 ingredients. They are chocolate on the inside and chocolate and peanut butter on the top.

Let me know in the comments below what your favorite Easter desserts are. I’d love to hear about your family traditions. Did you make any variations to The Best Easter Trifle Dessert? I hope that you and your loved ones have an amazing Easter. Thank you very much for supporting the Spice and Sugar Mama food blog!