I’ve always been a big fan of classic dirt cake so it’s probably not surprise that I’m sharing this fun Halloween dirt cake recipe today! It’s the perfect addition to any Halloween dessert table and a great treat for a Halloween night treat! Plus, it’s not just a Halloween graveyard dirt cake – it’s a poke cake too! Layers of pudding get literally poked into the cake to give the chocolate cake a delicious creamy filling! The combination of white chocolate pudding with the Devil’s food cake is well delivishly good! It’s one of my favorite Halloween treats I’ve made this year and was definitely the most popular among the kids when I was handing out extras to the neighbor. This Halloween dirt dessert is just so much fun to look at – even if it didn’t taste good (it does!), it’d still be one of the most fun Halloween recipes out there! Serve it up alongside this Halloween punch for kids and these witch hat cookies for a spooktacular celebration people will be talking about until next Halloween!
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Fun Halloween cake – I already mentioned it but this cake just looks spooktacular so if you’re looking for something that will make all the ghouls and boys ooh and aww, this is it!Easy – since this starts with a chocolate cake mix, okay Devil’s food cake mix, this cake really couldn’t be much easier. You could do a homemade chocolate cake if you want, but I prefer easy! Colorful – there’s something about a colorful dessert that just makes it taste better to me! Plus, a colorful dessert is so much more fun to take to Halloween parties because everyone will be looking at your Halloween cake!
Ingredients
Ingredient Notes
Devil’s food cake mix – I love the taste of devil’s food cake mix with its rich chocolate flavor but you could really use any cake mix you want for this! Pudding mix – I prefer white chocolate pudding mix for the filling of this Halloween poke cake, but you could vanilla or cheesecake pudding mix instead. Stay away from the instant chocolate pudding if you want the fun Halloween colors to show through! Milk – I always recommend using whole milk for something like this where you want the pudding to be nice and thick! Cool Whip – I like using Cool Whip for this because it’s nice and stabilized but you could use any other whipped topping or even a frosting like I used on my Easter swirl cake as well. Halloween sprinkles – you can either use a combo of Halloween colored sprinkles and candy eyeballs or get a mix that includes both already! Food coloring – I used green and orange gel food coloring to color my pudding, but you could really use any bright Halloween colors you want – green, purple, orange are the most popular choices.Halloween Candy – Decorate with any of your favorite Halloween candies that you might find in a graveyard – candy pumpkins, gummy worms, gummy body parts, candy bones, and more. If there’s anything I can tell you from my making Halloween punch for kids, kids love gummy body parts! Oil & eggs – use whatever your cake mix calls for. I think mine called for three eggs and oil but if yours calls for something different, do that instead. The idea is just to get a devil’s food cake out of it!
How to make a Halloween Dirt Cake
This Halloween dirt cake is special because not only is it a dirt cake, it’s actually a Halloween poke cake as well. If you want a plain dirt cake, try this dirt and worms cake and just add some Halloween ingredients on top!
1 – Make the Cake
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 in a large mixing bowl and mixed well with a whisk (you can also use a hand mixer on medium speed). If your directions are something different, do that. Pour the cake batter into the 9×13 baking dish, making sure to smooth it out so that it’s fairly level all the way across. 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.
2 – Make the Pudding
While the cake is cooling, make your pudding mixture so you can let it in chill in the refrigerator while you’re waiting for the cake to cool. 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.
3 – Add the pudding filling
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. Fill each of the holes so that the entire Halloween dirt cake is filled with a pudding center!
4 – Add the Dirt Cake Layer
Place all of the Oreos – including the cream center – in a food processor and pulse until you get fine Oreo crumbs. 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.
5 – Decorate the Graveyard
Break off the bottoms of the Milano cookies so they are more flat and look like tombstones (kind of like I did with my Hocus Pocus tombstones). 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. 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! Set the cake in the fridge to chill for 2 hours. Slice and serve! I like to try and make sure that each piece has either a tombstone or a Peep plus lots of fun candies and sprinkles of course! I mean just look at that dirt layer – I could eat the entire cake!
Expert Tips and Storage Info
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!
More Easy Halloween Desserts
If you like this Halloween Oreo dirt cake, you have to try these other delicious Halloween desserts!
Halloween pretzels recipe – the cutest Halloween pretzels that look like mini Frankensteins, these are always a great idea! Cauldron cupcakes – bake up these yummy chocolate cupcake directly in a cauldron then add a sweet bubbling brew treat (made out of vanilla pudding and rice krispies) right on top of the cake! Hocus Pocus cookies – delicious sugar cookies get a witchy makeover in this fun dessert! Spider web pretzels – a sweet and salty snack that’s a perfect no bake treat for Halloween! Halloween cookie bars – sugar cookie bars loaded with Halloween M&Ms and other yummy candy!
