Looking to make a dirt cake? This cake is a fun dessert and perfect for adding gummy worms, construction vehicles, and garden party cakes, to name a few. Kids absolutely love this treat!
There are many ways to present this type of cake, and in this post, I’ll show you how to make the edible dirt and one technique for a birthday cake with a number on top.
What is dirt cake? It’s just cake that looks like it’s covered in dirt. Really, it’s just a couple of yummy ingredients for this tasty dessert.
Often, the edible dirt will be used in small terra cotta pots with pudding and gummy worms like in our easy dirt cup recipe, but you can also use it on sheet cakes for a construction, dirt track, or garden theme. You can use it on cupcakes too for another fun party treat!
Related: Ocean Cake, Rainbow Cake, Unicorn Cake, and our recipe archives.
Supplies:
- Cake (any flavor)
- Buttercream (colored brown or chocolate)
- Crushed Oreos or Oreo pie crust
- Graham cracker crumbs
- Spatula for spreading buttercream
- Number cutout (optional)
How to Make a Dirt Cake:
The two simple parts of this recipe are making the cake, and then making the dirt. To make the dirt, take an Oreo pie crust (or you can make your own crushed oreos in a food processor) and combine them with a little bit of graham cracker crumbs until you have your desired dirt look.
Next, you’ll ice your cake with buttercream. Brown or chocolate buttercream works best because it blends with the dirt topping. Store bought buttercream works great for this cake since you don’t need the buttercream to hold its shape, but you can make your own too.
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If you’re wanting a number to be visible on the dirt cake, you’ll want to use a number cut out. After frosting the dessert, center the number cutout on top of the cake. This is an optional step. It gives it a look of an area of the crumbs being plowed though which is really fun!
Place the cake on a big sheet pan or cut out a large piece of parchment paper to help contain the dirt topping.
With clean hands or a spoon, add the dirt topping all over the cake. Sweep anything off the number cutout and your board.
Freeze the cake about 20 minutes. Then, peel off the number cutout. Place little toys or other accents on the cake to add to the look (optional).
Optional Supplies:
- Toy construction vehicles
- Toy cars – for dirt track racers
- Gummy worms
- Edible flowers – for a garden party look
There you have it, an easy homemade dirt cake. Enjoy!
More Dessert Ideas:
Emma used this tutorial to create her son’s second birthday party cake! The idea was to create a dirt track (Thunder Hollow – Cars 3) racing cake for their Pixar Cars themed party.
I loved this cake when I was a kid!
I’m going to make a Cars 3 (Thunder Hollow) version of this for my son’s birthday this year!
I love this! Simple but super cute. Going to make for my son’s 2nd birthday this summer!