Dirt Pudding! (with cleaner ingredients)

OMG! Do you remember having dirt pudding cups with crushed Oreo dirt and gummy worms on top??

I recently had the opportunity to make this for my kids and our homeschool group. Our theme for the week was MUD and we always do a sort of potluck when we meet up - since we all have hungry toddlers and we love variety. I was immediately taken over by the nostalgia of dirt pudding!

I knew right off the batt that I would try making this from scratch and with the cleanest ingredients available to me. Don't get me wrong, I grew up on Oreos and Snack Pack Puddings, but my kids live in a different time and I try my best to feed them without a ton of added sugars and junk.

What you'll need:

1. Not really a need per say but definitely more fun with a pot to trick the kids into believing it's real dirt in there - or just for the fun of being a creative mom.

2. If you are doing step 1 - put a smaller glass bowl inside of the pot to ensure food safety.

What you'll actually need for INGREDIENTS:

For the pudding base - I mixed two recipes - Sally's Baking Addiction and From Scratch with my own ingredients listed below:

1. Organic Cane Sugar

2.  Navitas Cacao Powder

3. Bob's Red Mill Cornstarch

4.  Kirkland Sea Salt (just my usual, use what you have)

5.  Whole Milk - We don't typically have this so I bought some Horizon Whole Milk but I got Lactose Free

6. From Scratch used 1 ½ ounces chopped dark chocolate, preferably 70% cacao content (about ⅓ cup chopped), plus more for serving I would have used Enjoy Life Dark Chocolate Morsels but ran out so instead I used Enjoy Life Semi-Sweet Mini Chips

7. Butter - I used Kerrygold Unsalted Pure Irish Butter

8. Vanilla - all I had on hand was Kirkland Vanilla Extract but I have been wanting to try Trader Joes Vanilla Bean Paste

9. Oreos - I researched which one was the tastiest with clean ingredients - I came across this article by Simply Recipes and chose the one that was most available to me at my local Target so that I could do a pick up order. Back to Nature Classic Creme Sandwich Cookies - SO YUM

10. Last ingredient - Gummy Worms! I searched all over for dye-free gummy worms and could not find much available to me and then I remembered that Sprouts would likely have an option.

    

    Sure enough, they did. I bought one box and after assembling the dirt pudding I still had enough to give the kids individual gummy worms after our lesson and lunch

I do recommend prepping this recipe at least 24 hours ahead for the pudding part. I made it late at night (while watching Bridgerton) and that didn't leave much room for error.

Assembly of our mud/ dirt pudding in a flower pot:

1. Glass bowl into flower pot

   

   
   

2. Pudding into glass bowl

3. I only did two layers of Offbrand Oreo dirt - pudding, dirt, pudding, dirt..

   

4. Add in worms with "dirt" on top and then some worms on top

   

5. I added flowers around the spacing between the bowl and the pot

6. Flowers - up to your discretion. I used Baby's Breath and pink flowers left over from a Valentine's bouquet. Baby's Breath is NOT edible and considered mildly toxic - I made sure there were no pieces in the actual pudding when serving the children BUT I would recommend a different flower just to be safe!

I have seen people make individual servings in small cups as well. You can use the flower pot idea or maybe a dirt bucket and shovels.. so many fun ideas.

This reminds me of a recipe my mom always did around halloween that looked like a cat litter box.... hahaha maybe this year I will recreate that as well!

Hope you enjoyed this idea, please tag me if you try it out!!

xx