Healthy Pudding “Dirt” Cups

Jump To Recipe // October 21, 2019 // 0 Comments »

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These pudding “dirt” cups with chocolate pudding and homemade sour gummy worms are a nostalgic favorite for both kids and adults to enjoy! It’s dairy-free, gluten-free, paleo, and can be made AIP!

What are Dirt Cups?

Dirt cups are one of those childhood joys that I will always cherish! They’re made with chocolate pudding with sour gummy worms poking out and are topped off with cookie crumbles to make it look like dirt. They’re so delicious, light-hearted and fun! Whenever they had this on a kids menu or as a treat at a birthday party, I always wanted it.

Traditional dirt cups are typically made with all premade ingredients. Boxed pudding, oreo cookies, and sour gummy worms that are filled with not so great ingredients.

These healthy dirt cups are made with homemade coconut cream based pudding, gummy worms with real fruit and gelatin, and grain-free cookies. Yes, it takes more effort to make it all homemade, but if you really want to walk down memory lane, it worth it!

How to Make the Healthy Dirt Cups

Make the gummy worms: Combine the strawberries, lime juice, and optional sweetener. Bring to a low simmer to allow the strawberries to soften. Remove from heat and cool slightly before adding to a blender. Sprinkle the gelatin over the strawberry lime mixture and blend the mixture until fully liquid. Layout the gummy worm mold and use the provided dropped to fill the worm molds. Transfer to the fridge and allow to sit for 1 1/2 – 2 hours.

For the pudding cups. Using a large saucepan, combine the coconut cream, sifted cocoa powder, maple syrup, and arrowroot starch. Whisk very well until thoroughly combined. Allow to simmer until thickened. Pour into pudding cups. Transfer to the fridge and allow to sit for 1 1/2 – 2 hours.
Assemble the dirt cups: After the pudding has set, layout the 4 pudding cups and give each a light stir to fluff up the pudding. Very carefully the gummy worms from their molds and place 3-4 (or more) worms in each pudding cup. You can either push them down to the bottom or keep them all at the top. Sprinkle the cookie crumbles over the top of each dirt cup. Serve chilled and enjoy!

The Ingredients for the Dirt Cups

Coconut cream, cocoa powder, maple syrup, and arrowroot starch

These are the main ingredients for the pudding. I highly suggest this coconut cream. For AIP you can also swap out cocoa for carob. I have not tried to make these with tapioca starch and don’t have any coconut free alternatives for the cream to suggest that would still keep this dairy-free.

Gelatin, strawberries and lime juice

These are the gummy worm ingredients. I like to use Vital Proteins gelatin (collagen won’t work), and you can honestly mix up the fruit and the juice! I like the strawberry lime combo, but you can do something like blueberry & lemon juice too if you’d prefer a different color and flavor.

Chocolate cookies

You’ll need about 1 cookie worth of crumbs for each pudding. To keep this AIP, you can use this oreo cookie recipe. If you can tolerate nuts, you can use simple mills chocolate crunchy cookies for a short cut.

The materials you’ll need

Gummy worm mold

I used this silicone mold, but you can use whichever mold you’d like!

4 small weck jars

These are the jars I used for this pudding. You can also use something like small mason jars or small glasses.

This recipe makes 4 puddings in the jars pictured, but you can easily scale it up or down depending on how many you’re needing the recipe to feed! It’s very easy to scale up or down!

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