DIRT CAKE RECIPE

As promised, here is the Dirt Cake Recipe:

Dirt Cake

¼ cup (1/2 stick) margarine
8 oz cream cheese
1 cup powdered sugar (sift before adding to mixture)
3 ½ cups milk
2 3-oz pkgs INSTANT French vanilla pudding mix
12 oz. Cool Whip (defrost in the fridge – not on the cabinet)
1 large pkg Oreo cookies
A flower pot or a pail large enough to hold 3 quarts
Gummy worms or silk or plastic flowers

Crush the cookies and set aside .Mix the butter, powdered sugar
and cream cheese until smooth. In another bowl, prepare pudding
by beating pudding mix and milk together; fold in Cool Whip.
Fold the cream cheese mixture and the pudding mixture together.
Wash flower pot or pail well, then line with aluminum foil.
Layer the crushed cookies and the pudding mixture in the pot or
pail as follows: 1/3 cookies, 1/2 pudding mixture, 1/3 cookies,
1/2 pudding, 1/3 cookies. Chill to set.
To serve: garnish pail of "dirt" with gummy worms or flower
pot filled with "dirt" with silk or plastic flowers.

This is the original recipe that I cut out from the Houston Chronicle many, many years ago. Now, I have to tell you that if you make the above recipe, it will not turn out like mine. We do not use instant anything around here, much less instant pudding. However, it would sure be alot easier to use it and hey, if your family is use to it, why not. Another change that I usually make to the original recipe is that I make chocolate pudding most of the time. Not that the vanilla is not good, but we are a bunch of chocoholics around here.

I usually serve this in a flower pot, but since my tablescape was an "ocean theme", I decided to use sand pails. The pails are so much easier because there is not a hole in the bottom like there is in flower pots. Also, you do not have to worry about the lead content of the pot and that saves you from lining it in plastic wrap and foil like I usually do. To get the cookie layer to look like dirt, I highly recommend using a food processor. It is fast and easy. The first layer is the cookie mixture, followed by the pudding layer and you alternate layers until the bucket is full, ending with the cookie layer.

Here is the finished product. When I do this in a flower pot, I put gummy worms on top along with a silk flower. It is really a cute dessert. Also, I have been known to put gummy worms in each dirt layer so that when you spoon it out of the pot, worms hang off the spoon with each scoop like they do in real dirt. Now this is a little too realistic for me, but try telling that to your little girl who thinks that would be the greatest thing. Never mind that several party guests would not eat it. (Jenny Birthday Memories!)

Another variation on this that I have done, especially when you are using a sand pail for a nautical theme party, is to crush shortbread cookies or vanilla sandwich cookies. The cookie layer will then look like sand. I added a little brown sugar on the top layer of the vanilla cookie mixture which made it look even more like sand. I also laid chocolate shells on the top of the final "sand" layer. It was really cute.

Enjoy!