{I think} I can cook - Strawberry "Surprise" Trifle

I can't really take a lot of credit for this recipe.

Okay. I can't take ANY credit for this recipe. This is something that my mom has probably been making for 30 or 40 years. It has a trifecta of summer goodness - berries, cool whip and rum (that's the "surprise"). 

I remember as a kid having this during the summers...of course made without the rum "surprise". I have no idea what she called this concoction...maybe she called it Strawberry Surprise, maybe I started calling it that, but it really doesn't matter. One of the great things about it is there's the potential for NO cooking involved (which translates to no screwing this recipe up). Here's what it looks like:

Oh sweet berry goodness. 

I must say this first- I NEVER put raspberries on the top. It's always been just straight up strawberries. But the raspberries looked REALLY good, and the strawberries looked kinda iffy, so I went with 1/2 raspberries and 1/2 strawberries. You can of course use any sort of berry, or combination of berries.

What you need:
Trifle Bowl - the one I have is from Crate and Barrel
Angel Food Cake - either baked at home or from the grocery store. Grocery store bought = no cooking involved.
Cool Whip (8oz container)
2 containers of Strawberries (or any other berries)
Rum

How you make it:
Bake or buy your Angel Food Cake. Remove it from the pan.

Clean and slice your strawberries. Cut the strawberries in 1/4. (or maybe smaller if you have giant berries).

Slice the Angel Food Cake in 1/3 sections with a serrated knife. Take each of the 1/3 sections and cut in 1/3 through the middle - like 1" from the bottom and then 1" from the top, so you'll have three 1" slices. You should have 9 pieces of cake that resemble a "C".

.


Take 2 slices and layer in the bottom of your trifle bowl. You will need to cut a small piece of cake from a 3rd slice to finish the layer.

 

Drizzle some rum on top of the cake layer.

Rum I brought back from USVI.

 

Use 1/3 of the cool whip and spread across the cake layer. Take some handfulls of berries and layer on top of the cool whip.

 

Repeat the cake, rum, cool whip and berry layers until you get to the top of the bowl. You should have about 3 layers of cake, 3 layers of rum drizzle, 3 layers of cool whip, and 3 layers of berries. For this particular trifle I put raspberries on the top. I also had about 1 slice of cake left over. There's no "pretty" way of serving this, so I usually just scoop it out with a big serving spoon.