This garden cake is a simple three layered chocolate cake in rounds. Prepare any standard cake mix that will make three layers. After cooling place on a sturdy plate or something that you can carry it on. This cake will get heavy.
Frost the bottom layer with chocolate frosting sides and top. Crush Oreo cookies and spread evenly on top of the bottom layer. Place gummy worm and chocolate “dirt” so that it’s running out the sides of the cake. Place second layer and repeat. Place third-top layer and repeat.
We were able to find gummy mice at a local Dollar type store. We put these mice in-between the layers climbing out climbing in. We donated the cake for a musical cake contest at the kid’s school. It was a BIG hit. Remember with three layers the garden cake is heavy.
More Dirt Cake Ideas
I made this fun garden cake for my son’s 10th birthday. He wanted something different than the usual character cake so I came up with a dirt cake. You’ll need two packages of Oreo cookies, two chocolate instant puddings, one cream cheese, one whipped topping and gummy worms.
You make the pudding according to the pie directions and add a tub of whipped topping and a block of cream cheese… this gives the pudding a yummier flavor. Crush your Oreos and reserve about one and a half cups for topping. You put a layer of crushed Oreos on the bottom of your pan (I used a pampered chef stoneware- it looked more like flower pot) then you spread a layer of your pudding mixture on top of that- continue that until you run out of pudding- top with your reserve Oreos…
For the fun decorations I went to the Wal-Mart toy aisle and found a bag full of plastic insects for 99 cents… I arranged those over the top along with the gummy worms and also made a stake out of cardboard with my son’s name on it. I wanted him to feel extra special so I got a 75 cent flower pot, lined the inside with plastic wrap and made him his very own “cake”…
The whole garden cake was a big hit with the boys and they all chose some of the critters as part of the party favors.
Cake by Cassandra K., Middletown, OH
This dirt cake was my son’s 2nd b-day cake! He was enamored with crawly bugs; it was also the year of the cicada, so it seemed fitting!!
I created a dirt cake in a bucket with fun fruit bugs. What made it extra fun was that I made a caterpillar sandwich loaf (rolls baked together so that they formed a snake on the tray, cut and filled with lunch meat) and ants on a log to go with the theme.
Cake by Kim E., Tasmania, Australia
My daughter wanted a DIFFERENT kind of cake for her “family” Birthday celebration… (she has a cake as well for her party with her friends)…so the idea of a DIRT CAKE was VERY APPEALING….
I first lined the pail with cello wrap…
I mixed together 1/2 cup softened butter, an 8 ounce pkg. softened cream cheese, and 1/2 cup confectioner sugar. In another bowl I then made up 2 (3.5 ounce) packages of instant vanilla pudding using 3 1/2 cups milk and mixed the pudding with 1 (12 ounce) container of frozen whipped topping that I had thawed…I then combined the pudding mixture with the cream cheese mixture. Then in the pail starting with some crushed Oreo cookies, and then the pudding mixture… I repeated the layers….the final layer being the crushed cookies… I then stuck some sour worms in for effect…we scooped out the cake using a new and clean child’s sand spade…
I chilled the cake for about 4 hours before hand which helped it to “set”…. everyone LOVED the cake..!!
Read Sandra’s “Party-Tale”: The story behind the cake…
Cake by Amanda W., Spokane, WA
For this cake I used a devil’s food cake mix and baked it in a bundt cake pan. When I went to take the dirt cake out of the pan, the top of it stuck to the pan, so I just filled the hole in the center with the remaining cake, which worked just fine.
I ground up chocolate cream-filled Oreo cookies in the food processor to make the “dirt”. I used the new melt and pour frosting and poured it over the dirt cake. Then I sprinkled the cookie crumbs all over the dirt cake.
For the construction cones, I used orange frosting from the can (I practiced on a paper plate first; the flat attachment works best). I just bought some little construction trucks to put on top. It was so funny, because when my 2-year-old son saw the dirt cake, he wanted to play trucks in it. So I handed out pieces of dirt cake as quickly as I could, and then let him go at it!
