This fun Halloween dirt cake is the perfect Halloween dessert for your next Halloween party! A chocolate cake gets filled with colorful pudding then topped with whipped topping, crumbled Oreo cookies, and Halloween treats and sprinkles for a delicious dessert everyone will love!
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease a 9×13 baking dish.
Prepare the cake according to the package directions. For my cake, I combined the cake mix with water, oil, and eggs and mixed well with a whisk. If your directions are something different, do that.
Bake the cake in the preheated oven for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Set the cake aside to allow it to cool completely.
Pudding Filling
In a medium bowl combine the instant pudding and milk and whisk until smooth. Place the pudding in the refrigerator to chill until the cake is cool.
Once the cake is cool, pull the pudding out and separate it into two different bowls. Add orange food coloring to one of the bowls and green food coloring to the other then stir to color your puddings green and orange.
green food coloring, orange food coloring
With the end of a wooden spoon or a chopstick, poke holes throughout the entire cake, leaving a little space in between holes.
Carefully use a spoon or clean cooking syringe to insert the pudding into the holes. I like to do a pattern of alternating colors so that each piece has at least one section of each color.
Topping
Place all of the Oreos – including the cream center – in a food processor and pulse until you get fine Oreo crumbs.
30 Oreo cookies
Finish off the cake with an even layer of whipped topping. Then top with the Oreo crumbs, making sure to cover the entire layer of Cool Whip.
1 (8oz) container whipped topping
Break off the bottoms of the Milano cookies so they are more flat and look like tombstones.
3-4 Milano cookies
Melt the chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl in the microwave for 30 seconds. Remove and stir then put back into the microwave and melt for another 20 seconds. Keep continuing this for 20 second intervals until the chocolate is completely melted.
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Place the melted chocolate in either a piping bag or a zipper top plastic bag with a tiny corner cut off. Use the chocolate to add sayings and dates to the Milano cookies to make them look like tombstones.
Decorate the top of the Halloween dirt cake to look like a spooky graveyard filled with pumpkins, gummy worms, candy bones, Peeps ghosts and cats, Milano cookie tombstones, and more! Finish it off with a sprinkling of Halloween sprinkles to make it even more festive!
ghost, pumpkin, and black cat Peeps candy, candy pumpkins, Halloween sprinkles, Gummi worms
Set the cake in the fridge to chill for 2 hours.
Slice and serve.
Notes
Store leftovers in the fridge for up to three days. You can loosely wrap with plastic wrap or just put it in the cake as is.Crush your Oreos by placing them in a zipper top bag (double bag it) and crushing with a rolling pin until they’re fine crumbs if you don’t have a food processor. Or you can just buy already made Oreo crumbs like these ones instead.Make sure to get the pudding all the way down in the poke holes so that you actually get the taste of the pudding with the cake. I like to use a syringe for filling the holes best but you can also use a spoon or a wide smoothie straw to get a good amount of pudding into the holes.Switch out the Cool Whip for chocolate pudding if you’d rather stay away from the Cool Whip (or don’t have any). It tastes delicious, and is a good alternative to the Cool Whip!Cover the Cool Whip layer but don’t add too many Oreo crumbs or the cake will just taste like crumbs and be very messy!