This spooky trifle has layers of chocolate cake, crushed cookies, green mousse and cream and gummy bugs – perfect for Halloween!
This is Halloween… This is Halloween… for all things fun and spooky, be sure to try out this trifle as well as some other treats like our Graveyard Dirt Cake, Oogie Boogie Popcorn and more!
Our Favorite Oogie Boogie Dessert
We love all things Halloween and Christmas – and everything in between!
Yes, our family is a huge fan of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. We love Jack Skellington and Sally, but especially the Oogie Boogie!
We wanted to make an Oogie Boogie trifle that honored him and decided to layer it with cake chunks, a green cheesecake mousse filling, crushed cookies and of course bugs – gummy worms!! Not only is this spooky trifle perfect for your next movie night, but it’s also great for Halloween – especially because kids go NUTS for it!
How to Make a Halloween trifle
This Oogie Boogie trifle is a cinch. You just have to have all your ingredients close by and get ready to LAYER!
CAKE. Make cake as directed on box. Let cool and cut into cubes.
PUDDING. Make pudding by mixing pudding mixes and milk. Add the whipped cream and mix well. Add neon green food coloring. Mix well and set aside.
LAYER. Add ¼ the whipped cream/pudding mixture to the bottom of the trifle dish. Layer ⅓ the cake cubes. Sprinkle on ⅓ the crushed Oreos along with a few gummy worms. Repeat the layers.
TOP OFF. Top with last of whipped cream and pudding mixture. Sprinkle with last of crushed cookies and gummy worms. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
Keep scrolling to see how you can make this in individual serving sizes too!
Recipe Tips
Cake layer: The cake layer can be made using a box cake, homemade with your favorite cake recipe or even using a plain cake from a bakery. You can also change up the flavor according to your preference.
Green Goo: The green filling is just a cheesecake pudding mixture colored green. You can use vanilla or white chocolate pudding or even pistachio which is already green. A note about the pudding: you want to buy the packaged pudding mix not pre-made pudding. The pudding mix needs to be INSTANT pudding otherwise it will not set correctly. Make the mix according to our recipe, not the recipe on the box.
Additions: The gummy candy really makes this dish fun. You can use gummy worms and gummy bugs. You can add chocolate bugs. You can use festive sprinkles.
Making Ahead, Storing + Serving
Make ahead: You can make this dish the day before, but you don’t want to make it too far in advance as the pudding will eventually cause the cake layer to become saturated and soggy. If you want to make the different elements further in advance you can and store them separately until you’re ready to assemble the trifle.
Leftovers: If you happen to have leftover trifle you can cover it and keep in the fridge for a few days. The cake layer may become saturated and soft, but it will still be delicious.
Serving dish: Since this is trifle you really want to stick to using a clear dish so you can really enjoy the pretty and fun layers. There are a lot of fun options out there. You can use a more traditional trifle dish that is on an elevated stand like this one. You can even make individual trifles using clear plastic cups. Here are some other bowls I found while searching online that would be really cool to use.
Make them Individual Serving Size!
Want to make and serve the trifle in individual cups? No prob!
It works great for that too. It takes more work layering each cup, but it’s also a great idea. Just add a little of the pudding mixture, followed by crushed cookies and cake pieces, and keep repeating the layers until you get to the top.
You can see how we did it in the picture above.
More Halloween Treats:
- Monster Eye Sugar Cookies
- Mummy Cookies
- Skeleton Pudding Cups
- Halloween Puppy Chow
- Gummy Worm Jello Cups
- Chocolate Cake Spider Trifle
Oogie Boogie Trifle Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 box chocolate cake mix plus ingredients on back
- 6.6 oz white chocolate pudding mix 2 boxes
- 3 cups 2% milk
- 1 large container cool whip
- green food coloring
- 20 Oreos crushed
- gummy worms
Instructions
- Make cake as directed on box. Let cool and cut into cubes.
- Make pudding by mixing pudding mixes and milk. Add the whipped cream and mix well. Add neon green food coloring. Mix well and set aside.
- Add ¼ the whipped cream/pudding mixture to the bottom of the trifle dish. Layer ⅓ the cake cubes. Sprinkle on ⅓ the crushed Oreos along with a few gummy worms. Repeat the layers.
- Top with last of whipped cream and pudding mixture. Sprinkle with last of crushed cookies and gummy worms.
- Refrigerate until ready to serve.
It looks so good the kids will love this well done
I hope they do! It’s delicious!
We made this for Halloween & it was a hit!! The kids loved the gummy worms of course! Very delicious!
A great dessert that goes with any occasion….just change the color. A favorite in our household.
I’m a little late seeing this for Halloween but am going to save it for next year. Looks super fun and the flavors are all yummy.
What’s not to like about cake, pudding, oreos, & gummy worms together?! This is always a hit with my kids!
How fun is this trifle?! Who wouldn’t love to have this added to any party?! I know I would!
We made this as dessert for our grinch night. We watched the 2018 version and had this. Everyone loved it. We just left out the worms but will add them at Halloween
Super easy, kid friendly recipe
Did you use 8 oz of cool whip or 16 oz?