Strawberry Trifle

We celebrated the 4th of July last night with dear friends and family.  We have dear friends who always have a wonderful celebration on the 4th of July.  Lots of wonderful food and fellowship and the best presentation of fire works and patriotic music.  Great time!

I took this strawberry trifle.  We really love strawberry shortcake and I'm always looking for different ways to make shortcake or doing a little enhancement to change things up a bit.  I have a recipe called Cherries in the Snow which is a trifle using cherry pie filling.  I was thinking about what to take to the celebration.  I usually take pie or cake and I remembered this recipe and I thought I would change it up and use strawberries.  I turned out very well.  The angel food cake was soaked pretty good with strawberry juice and it tasted delicious.

Here is the recipe:

2 angel food cakes (you can rub off the brown from the cake if you want totally white) but tear the cake into 1 inch pieces.

Mix-
2 cups powdered sugar
2-8 oz cream cheese
1 cup heavy cream (whipped)
1 1/2 cartons of whipping cream ( I used two smaller containers)

With a mixer beat together powdered sugar and cream cheese until creamy. Then fold in heavy cream and cool whip.

Strawberry mixture-
2 cartons of frozen sliced strawberries with sugar (I use these because they produce a lot of liquid which you need).  Fresh berries with sugar on them don't produce enough liquid.
2-3 pounds of fresh strawberries cut in half (larger berries cut into fourths)
1/2 to 1 cup of sugar of these berries mix well and then combine with the frozen sliced berries with liquid.

To arrange the trifle start with angel food cake make a layer of cake the cover with half of strawberries, then cream cheese mixture, then cake rest of strawberries and top with remaining cream cheese mixture. You can garnish with fresh strawberries and fresh mint.

Suggestions:  You could use strawberries and raspberries.  I have tried these together and they are delicious together.  You could also use pound cake instead of angel food if you prefer.