Bananutella Trifle

World Nutella Day was February 5th, and you know what I was doing that day? Unbeknownst to me, I was celebrating! I was making this trifle right here. Of course, I didn’t realize what day it was until the day had come and gone, so it turns out I’m just a little bit late to the party. That said — I hope you’ll try this trifle, anyway. I promise it’s good!

Nutella is everywhere these days, for obvious reasons – mainly, it’s magical. But up until the 6th grade, when Carolina moved into my family’s home, I had never heard of the stuff. Then again, there were a lot of things I hadn’t heard of before I met Carolina.

For one, I didn’t know you could buy electric yellow suitcases – didn’t even know they existed. But there she was whisking one off the train the day my mother and I picked her up at the New Haven train station. She was our family’s second au pair, this time from France, and she had a personality just as vibrant as her suitcase.

We grew close quickly, and as an insecure, somewhat shy 6th grader, I looked up to Carolina: confident, beautiful, outgoing, adventurous. Sometimes, at night, when she was unofficially off-duty from babysitting me and my brother, I’d sneak upstairs to hang out with her. She’d let me pour over her French fashion magazines or smell her Jean Paul Gaultier perfume, the one whose bottle was shaped like a woman’s hourglass figure. One time, I spotted a watercolor painting tucked behind her bedside table. It was of a woman with an umbrella, walking naked in the rain, and she looked an awful lot like Carolina. Caro, I asked her, did your boyfriend paint this? Is this you?

In the summertime, Carolina would take me and my brother to the pool club by our house, and amongst a sea of one-piece bathing suits, mothers wading with their children, kids running wild, there was Carolina styling an itsy-bitsy black bikini. We did art projects, went on bike rides, played tag until we collapsed. We sang pop songs into a tape recorder, talked about life, cooked together, and one quiet afternoon, Carolina taught me to make crepes. Of course, anyone who knows crepes knows that their one true love is Nutella.

I have Carolina to thank for a lot of things. For making my awkward years a little less awkward. For getting me outside and active when all I wanted to do was laze around. For teaching me a thing or two about those mysterious boys. For bringing a little bit of her yellow suitcase into our home. And for introducing me to the wonders of Nutella, which could transform something as simple as toast into an everyday treat.

So here I am, celebrating Nutella Day – just a little late – with what I like to call Bananutella Trifle. That’s right. Tender, moist banana cake topped with a creamy, silky, luxurious Nutella mousse. The two of them make a rather wonderful pair.