Italian Cream Cake Trifle Recipe

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and flour a 9 inch cake pan. (if you have any batter left over, simply pop in a couple of cup cake liners).

Cream butter and butter flavored shortening until smooth. Add sugar and mix well. Add eggs one at a time, just until the yellow disappears. Mix for about 30 seconds more.

Combine flour, baking soda and dash of salt. Set aside.

Add 1/3 of the flour mixture (above) to the creamed mixture. Mix well. Now add 1/2 of the buttermilk. Mix well. Add another 1/3 of the flour mixture, rest of the buttermilk, then last of the flour mixture, mixing well after each addition. (i.e. flour, buttermilk, flour, buttermilk, flour) Add the vanilla & mix well.

Stir in the remaining ingredients, coconut and pecans. Pour evenly into the greased and floured cake pan.

Bake at 350 F for 20-25 minutes until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cool for 10 minutes and remove from pans. Let cool completely.

Mix the Instant pudding with the milk and allow to set. This should only take 5 – 10 minutes.

In a separate bowl, mix the mascarpone and sweetened condensed milk well until smooth. The instant pudding should now be set; add this to the mascarpone mixture and mix well. Now fold in the Cool Whip and refrigerate until ready to assemble.

Break up the cake (you can just use your hands) so it is in small pieces or large crumbs).Then assemble and layer starting with cake, pudding, coconut and pecans, repeat 1-2 times. If you end with pudding and toasted coconut sprinkled on top you can cover with plastic and it comes off fairly clean.