I will admit it. I don't watch football. Just not a fan. Baseball, yes. Just about any other team sport. Except for football. I just never did get the scoring thing. I'm sure I could learn but I haven't bothered. And is it ironic that one of my favorite movies ever is "Rudy "?But I DO love Super Bowl food. Every year, our neighbors invite us to their house to watch the game and eat great chili and various other appetizers. And every year, another neighbor brings her amazing "Death By Chocolate" (aka DBC) , served in a trifle bowl. Since I love chocolate, and I love all kitchen things retro, I was fascinated by the bowl. I'd seen trifle bowls in old magazines, but never saw one in use until I saw Sandra's dessert (not the above photo, but very similar) She simply layered Nabisco Chocolate wafer cookies, homemade whipped cream (Just like the famous Nabisco Icebox Cake - yum...), chocolate pudding and chopped up chocolate candy bars (the mini ones from Hershey's.) It is so good. . My younger son and I would live for Super Bowl Sunday just to have DBC from Sandra (and we always got to take home some leftovers, she made a lot!)
This year, Alex made Sandra's DBC twice. We didn't have the exact recipe, but hey - layer all those ingredients in a trifle bowl and you can't go wrong! He made his own whipped cream (he calls it "schlag", ala the famous Peter Luger's restaurant). We had about 35 people over at our house for one occasion, and we had just about as many desserts. The most popular one? Alex's DBC. By far.
Trifle bowls are amazing. You build your dessert in them. I've sliced fresh strawberries and poured a bit of sugar on them and let them sit until the juices drained out a bit. I've poured the strawberry juice onto toasted pound cake cubes, and then layered the cubes with fresh whipped cream and the sliced strawberries. You can use angel food cake instead of poundcake to lower the fat content. You can layer just about any kind of cake with anything creamy. You can use non-fat or sugar free Cool-whip, real whipped cream, brownies, cookies, fruit, mousse or sweetened mascarpone cheese. The sky's the limit. I've done simple cut-up layered fruit in a trifle bowl, following the colors of the rainbow. Everything looks so pretty and delicious in a trifle bowl.
You can also layer salad ingredients in a trifle bowl, sort of a deconstructed salad. And for Super Bowl, a few layers of ingredients for a Mexican salad will not go unappreciated - try black beans, guacamole, salsa, shredded cheddar cheese or queso fresco, corn, taco chips - you get the picture.
I have two trifle bowls. I think the first one came from a Mikasa outlet, it looks like the one at the top of this post. I also have this one from Pampered Chef
I like it because it's easy to store - the pedestal separates from the bowl- and because it comes with a lid it's easy to put leftovers in the fridge. You can also get trifle bowls at Bed, Bath and Beyond and Amazon.com. A few years ago, I had to search everywhere for them. Now they're all over.
I'm always looking for other ideas for trifle bowls, so let me know if you have any. For now, I'm going to take mine and fill them with lemons or oranges and put them on my kitchen island. I need that bit of color right now, it's a bit dreary here!
Anyway, yes , the Super Bowl. Go ... um... Who's playing again? :-)
