If Your Cake Is Impossibly Stuck To The Pan, Just Turn It Into Trifle

There are few things better than the smell of a fresh-baked cake in the oven. The sweet scent fills your whole kitchen, and you know that enjoying a delicious dessert is just a short time away. Unfortunately, if you forget to grease your pan before pouring the batter in, that excitement can quickly become a sinking feeling when you try to take your cake out. But even if your cake is impossibly stuck, there may still be a way to create a crowd-pleasing treat.

If you're only able to pull your cake out in pieces, you can use them as layers for a trifle. The layered dessert combines a few different sweet elements — usually cake, pudding, whipped topping, custard, and fruits — alternating inside a pedestal bowl to create one delicious dessert.

Since the cake pieces will be covered and surrounded by other sweet elements, your guests won't pay any attention to the broken pieces.

The trifle has been around since the 1700s. The dessert often used overbaked or stale cakes as a way to reduce wasted food. After soaking the cake in alcohol to add a little extra moisture, bakers built up the rest of the dessert with other sweet fillings. Once the dessert gained popularity in Europe, Americans began making their own versions across the pond.

Though more traditional versions of the dessert include a sherry-soaked sponge cake, custard, and a whipped cream topping, there are much simpler versions you can whip up in a time crunch. These days, the dessert commonly incorporates fresh fruit, making it the perfect dessert to follow an Easter brunch, serve up for Mother's Day, or enjoy during a summer barbecue. You could even mimic the flavors of a strawberry shortcake by combining a fluffy yellow cake, strawberries, whipped topping or frosting, and strawberry jam.

Just make sure not to recreate the sweet-and-savory trifle that Rachel Green mistakenly made on "Friends." The character, played by Jennifer Aniston, accidentally added beef, onions, and peas with the trifle's traditional sweet ingredients after combining two different recipes for the dessert in Season 6, Episode 9. (And, according to actor Matt LeBlanc, who played Joey on the show, filming the scene was just as gross as the idea of the recipe itself.)

If trifles aren't your thing, there are still a few ways to whip up something delicious without completely scrapping all your hard work. You can crumble up the cake completely and mix in some frosting to create cake pops. Or, for a more refreshing treat on warmer summer days, mix the pieces into some homemade ice cream or top off an ice cream sundae with some crumbles.