Easy Easter Dirt Cake

In the world of cooking, kids, and ease, few recipes come to mind. My son wanted to wow his friends at school for their home ec party and he remembered I made a dirt cake to a tennis match last year. The recipe I found actually made too much--it says it serves 12-15 but those servings must be huge! It fed us tennis ladies with leftovers AND I still had some of the pudding/cool whip mixture at home. Frankly it was too much. So I've tailored the recipe to fit a smaller crowd of 8-10 people.

• 1 package of Oreo cookies (15.5 oz)
• 6 oz of cream cheese at room temperature
• 3 tablespoons of softened butter
• 2 small packages of instant chocolate pudding
• 2 1/3 cups milk
• 8 oz Cool Whip
• gummy worms, M&Ms

Crush Oreo cookies in a plastic zip bag until they are as finely crushed as possible.

Wisk together chocolate pudding in the milk and set aside. Mix the cream cheese and butter together until smooth. Add the pudding to this cream cheese and butter and mix again until combined. Add Cool Whip and mix until completely combined.

Look for some kind of cute container. I've used a plastic flower pot in the past (and put silk flowers on top for decoration). Today I've used my trifle dish because it's what I had on hand.

Begin the bottom layer with the crushed Oreos. Follow with a layer of the pudding mixture. Repeat again but add the gummy worms to the second layer of Oreos. Top with a third and final layer of crushed Oreos. We topped our dirt cake with speckled Easter M&Ms. You could also use Peeps or some other type of Easter candy.