Dirt Cake

My sister in law made this cake for my farm themed baby shower. It was the best thing at the party and none of it was left. I had never made it so I took her recipe and a few I have seen online and put one together for our dear friend Denver’s birthday. I made a sign that read "Old as Dirt" and wrote it on a paper shuvel. You can make this cake lactose free or regular.

Ingredients:

1 Pkg. = 32 oz. OREO Cookies or Chocolate Sandwich cookies with crème (finely crumbed in food processor)

1 (8 oz.) package of cream cheese or Non-Dairy Cream Cheese such as Tofutti (bought nondairy version at Sprouts) – room temperature

1 cup Powdered Sugar (Confectioners’ Sugar)

½ cup Softened Margarine such as Country Crock or butter

3.5 cups Lactaid Milk nondairy milk or regular milk

2 (3.4 oz.) packages of Instant Vanilla Pudding or French Vanilla pudding (or chocolate pudding, see image example above)

1 (12 oz.) container of Cool Whip or frozen whipped topping (thawed)

1-2 (7 oz.) packages of gummy worms found in the candy aisle at your local supermarket

Directions:

In a food processor finely chop all the cookies very fine. You can do this with 8-10 cookies at time. The white cream will disappear.

Cream together the butter, cream cheese and powdered sugar in a bowl with a hand mixer. Set the cream cheese mixture off to the side while mixing the next few ingredients in a separate bowl.

In a large bowl mix together the milk, pudding packages then add cool whip. Lastly, slowly mix in cream cheese mixture.

Using a large Trifle Bowl for a large party or individual parfair cups you can start layering your Dirt Cake. Starting with finely chopped Oreos and then follow with pudding mixture, ending with crumbs on top. I did these two ways. In the trifle bowl I did 1 cup of cookies smashed down with my fingers on the bottom, added 2 cups of cream mixture and alternating cookies then cream mixture until you use your last 1-2 cups of cookies on top. Do the same thing in small cups with smaller quantities.

Refrigerate overnight.

Notes: you can add some mint leaves or artificial flowers to make it look like a garden. See all the varieties of ideas to create your own Dirt Cake in the images above. You can even alternate vanilla pudding for chocolate pudding.