Easter Dirt Cake recipe s a fun twist on an old-fashioned recipe! Make this into a delicious Easter dessert with some Oreo cookies chocolate eggs, bunnies, chicks, peeps and a little colored coconut.
In a food processor*, crush your cookies - cream filling and all, until fine crumbs. Reserve about ⅓ of the cookie crumbs, about 1 ½ cups. Enough to cover the top of the cake in a thin layer. Add melted butter to the rest of the cookie crumbs and press ⅔ of crumbs into the bottom of a 9x13 inch pan.
With a stand or hand mixer, mix cream cheese until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes on medium-high. Slowly add in powdered sugar on low until combined, about a minute. Scrape down sides of bowl as needed, fold in whipped topping.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk the dry pudding mix into the milk for 1-2 minutes until smooth and thick. Gently fold pudding mixture (on low or by hand) into cream cheese mixture until evenly incorporated. If desired, using a microplane, grate between 1-2 oz white chocolate into the pudding mixture and set aside. Spread pudding mixture on top of crushed cookies, using an offset spatula to spread evenly over the top. Top evenly with remaining crushed cookies. Cover and refrigerate for 3 hours or overnight.
When ready to serve, decorate as desired, creating your own little scene, or let your littles (or bigs) go a little crazy and decorate the cake or their piece alone!
HOW TO TINT COCONUT
If tinting your coconut, place desired amount of coconut in a baggie, add in a few drops of green food coloring, seal and shake until desire color is achieved. Spread on top of cake in piles or cover the entire cake. My family doesn't care for coconut, so I just did little piles of "grass."
Notes
*If you don't own a food processor, simply place the cookies in a freezer baggie (gallon sized) and using a rolling pin, whack until crushed, then roll until fine crumbs.
There are several Instant Pudding options out there, standard Jell-O brand, I used Jell-O's Simply Good, but they have discontinued it. When choosing a natural instant pudding, the amounts should be the same, use the small packages as long as the serving size is roughly 4 servings per box. There are some out there that are sugar free, again, as long as pudding gets thick, it should be fine.
If a real "dirty" cake is desired, omit the butter altogether and just press the crumbs into the crust.
Dirt cake recipe without cream cheese | Prefer not to use cream cheese? Just leave it out, combine the whipped topping with the pudding mixture and you are all set.