Graveyard Dirt Cake

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Dirt cake is really a trifle in disguise: layers of cream-cheese-lightened chocolate pudding and crushed sandwich cookies, built in a single dish and decorated to look like freshly dug earth. It has to chill for at least four hours, which makes it the ideal thing to build the night before a party.

Ingredients

• 1 x 510 g pack chocolate sandwich cookies
• 115 g cream cheese, softened
• 60 g unsalted butter, softened
• 100 g icing sugar
• 2 x 90 g boxes instant chocolate pudding mix
• 720 ml cold whole milk
• 250 g whipped topping or softly whipped double cream
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• To decorate: gummy worms, a few rectangular shortbread or Milano-style cookies, edible flowers or candy pumpkins

Method

1. Blitz the sandwich cookies to fine crumbs in a food processor (or seal in a bag and crush with a rolling pin). Set aside about 250 g of crumbs for the top and middle layers.
2. Beat the cream cheese, butter, and icing sugar together until completely smooth with no lumps.
3. In a separate large bowl, whisk the pudding mix with the cold milk for 2 minutes, then let it stand 3 minutes until thick.
4. Fold the cream cheese mixture into the pudding, then fold in the whipped topping and vanilla until no streaks remain.
5. In a 23 x 33 cm dish, layer: half the remaining cookie crumbs, half the pudding, the reserved 250 g crumbs, then the rest of the pudding. Finish with the last of the crumbs so the top is solid "dirt."
6. Cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours, ideally overnight.
7. Just before serving, press the rectangular cookies in as tombstones, tuck gummy worms half-in / half-out of the dirt, and add flowers or candy pumpkins.

Make it spookier: write "RIP" on the tombstone cookies with a little melted white chocolate in a piped bag, and pipe a few extra worms out of the dirt with tinted buttercream. For individual servings, build it in clear plastic cups so the layers show.