Trail Trifle in a Mug
Instant pudding, crumbled shortbread, and dried fruit layered in a cup while camp settles.
- calories
- 540
- weight
- 4 oz
- cal / oz
- 135
- protein
- 6 g
- serves
- 2, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 0 min
- total time
- 10 min
- water
- 180 ml cold
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dessert
- No cook
- Car camping
- Backpacking
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Vegetarian
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Dump and stir
Ingredients
| Instant vanilla pudding mix | 1 small box (3.4 oz) | instant only, the cook-and-set kind needs a stove and a fridge |
|---|---|---|
| Powdered whole milk | 1/3 cup | replaces the 2 2/3 cups of fresh milk in the original |
| Shortbread or plain butter cookies | 4 oz | stands in for angel food cake, which crushes to dust |
| Dried fruit | 1 cup | strawberries, blueberries, mango, or mandarin segments |
| Powdered sugar | 1 tbsp | |
| Vanilla extract | 1/4 tsp | in a small dropper bottle, or skip it |
| Salt | a pinch |
Method
- Put the dried fruit in a cup with 60 ml of cold water and leave it while you do everything else. Twenty minutes is enough to make it chewable instead of sharp.
- In a leak-proof jar or a wide-mouth bottle, shake the pudding mix, milk powder, powdered sugar, and salt with 180 ml of cold water. Shake hard for a full minute.
- Let it stand five minutes. It will thicken to a soft custard. Cold water sets it slower than a fridge does, so give it the time.
- Break the cookies into rough chunks. Do not crush them fine.
- Layer cookie, pudding, and drained fruit into two mugs. Add the vanilla over the top. Two rounds of layers is plenty.
- Eat within an hour. The cookies go soft, which is the point, but past that it is one texture.
A trifle is layers of soft cake, custard, and fruit, and the only part of that requiring a kitchen is the custard. The original simmers milk, sugar, cornstarch, and an egg on the stove and then chills it for hours. Instant pudding mix does the same job with cold water and five minutes of standing, and powdered whole milk replaces the two and two-thirds cups of fresh milk you cannot carry.
Angel food cake is out. It crushes into powder in a pack and stales in a day. Shortbread holds its shape until the pudding hits it, then softens into the same effect. The whipped cream layer is gone entirely; there is no shelf-stable version of it worth carrying, and the pudding already covers the creamy part. Soak the dried fruit separately so it does not pull water out of the custard.
Packing
Pudding mix, milk powder, sugar, and salt premixed into one bag at home. Cookies in a rigid container or you are packing crumbs. Fruit in its own bag so it can soak separately.
Variations
- Chocolate pudding mix and a bag of chocolate wafer cookies makes the darker version.
- Crumbled graham crackers work if shortbread is not around, though they soften faster.
- A spoonful of freeze-dried raspberries scattered on top rehydrates in the pudding itself.
https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/angel-food-cake-fruit-trifle