I was at the dog park this week, chatting with my girlfriend who grew up in Oklahoma.

She mentioned she was craving a banana meringue pudding dessert popular in the south. It’s so easy to make, she said, it’s not that popular anymore.

That didn’t make sense at first — until I though about the trifle.

This centuries-old English dessert is exactly what my girlfriend was describing: it’s easy, it doesn’t require making anything, you don’t even have to turn on your oven or stove. Who wants to bring something like that to a potluck?

Me, actually.

The trifle — similar to the parfait — is a layered dessert, which traditionally calls for cubes of sponge or pound cake, often soaked in alcohol, fruits and vanilla custard. The taste is almost as important as the appearance, and this dessert even has its own trifle dish — glass and easy to marvel at.

No one makes trifle anymore, it seems. But it’s a go-to dessert for me, especially when I’ve got leftover cake and no room in my stomach to eat it.

So here’s my chocolate version of the English classic:

Leftover cake

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The best thing about trifles is that you can basically use whatever you want — as long as the flavors taste good. I like to use leftover cake to make trifle — to create a whole 'nother dessert. In this case, I used a leftover chocolate ganache cake — frosting and all.