JULIE WELLS: Easter trifle a sweet, silky dessert for holiday dinner

Easter Sunday is just around the corner and man, oh, man, do I have the sweetest recipe lined up for today.

This Easter trifle is made up of layers of crushed Oreo cookies and chocolate fudge pudding and topped off with a hollow chocolate bunny, edible Easter grass and Cadbury Mini Eggs.

This is possibly one of the easiest desserts I’ve whipped together, and the flavor of the chocolate fudge pudding mixed in with cream cheese and Cool Whip makes the pudding taste light and silky.

The only drawback to this layered dessert is that it you’ll have a few extra bowls to clean up at the end of it all, but if you’ve got a husband and a few kids around, they’ll want to lick the bowl and spoon anyway.

I believe this dessert is sure to be a crowd-pleaser for the young and old. A grown-up can appreciate the smoothness of the pudding, and the kids will love the fact that this trifle is topped with a chocolate bunny and all of the other trimmings.

If you don’t have a trifle bowl, don’t fret — this dessert can be assembled in a 9-by-13-inch glass casserole dish or individual clear plastic cups.

Also, if you’ve got a package of the bunny marshmallow peeps, you can substitute those for the chocolate bunny sitting on top. The edible Easter grass is a quick way to add the grass effect, but feel free to use dyed coconut. Decorating the top of the Easter dish should be fun and festive.

Julie Wells writes the weekly The Recipe Box food column for the Rockdale Citizen.

EASTER TRIFLE

What you need …

One 14.3-ounce package of Oreo cookies

Two 3.9-ounce boxes of chocolate fudge instant pudding

4 cups of cold milk

8 ounces of cream cheese, softened

One 8-ounce tub of Cool Whip, thawed