Help Needed with a Jungle/safari/animal Party

J.,
Here is the recipe that i have:

2 small packages Instant vanilla pudding
3 c. Cold Milk
8oz cream cheese
half a cup butter
1 c. powdered sugar
1tsp.vanilla extract
12oz. cool whip
1 large pkg. of crushed Oreos

Mix milk n pudding. Mix cream cheese,butter, powdered sugar, n v.extract and add to pudding. Crushed oreos between layers then top with worms.

Hope the parties fun!!

One idea is just make cupcakes with different colored frosting (similar to the colors of the animals...yellow frosting with string licorice stripes for a tiger).

DIRT-you are correct: chocolate pudding, crushed oreos with a gummy worm. I did one huge one for my husband's party. Took a big bowl, put ice in the bottom and a small plate on top of that. Found a bowl to fill that space and put an actual plant in it (you could do an tall vase filled with tootsie rolls with banana leaves coming out the top like a tree). The "dirt" would go around the vase. It was quite a lot of layering of bowls and plates, however it was worth it in the end. Good luck!

I just had a safari/jungle party yesterday! I made cupcakes from the book "Hello Cupcake!" They were a HIT! 24 cupcakes came together to make an alligator and they looked so cute. It was not that hard to make either. Also, for a playgroup, I have made monkey, lion, and elephant cupcakes, also not hard to make from the same book.

We called it dirt and worms. It is just crushed Oreo cookies (without the filling-you can buy a box of them already crushed without filling), chocolate pudding, and gummy worms. Layer the cookies and pudding and randomly put in the worms. We used crumbled graham cracker crumbs as a "top soil" sometimes too with a worm or two peaking out.

I can email you some pictures of the cupcakes if you want to contact me with your email address!

Wholesale clubs (BJ's,etc) have such affordable cakes w/ wonderful decs/themes! And they're good, too. If you or a friend have a membership to a wholesale club, see if they make a "Diego" cake...without Diego..it would be a cute jungle cake.

Dirt recipe..........OMG LOVE THIS STUFF!

http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/recipes/dish-of-dirt-54542.aspx

Wow! What an awesome party you're planning! I know this isn't exactly what you are looking for, but its really good.

1 box Of Duncan Hines Chocolate Cake Mix
1 can Of Duncan Hines Extra Creamy Chocolate Frosting
1 16 ounce bag Of Tollhouse Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
3 bars of Hershey's Chocolate(almonds optional)
1 package of Gummy Worms
1 large glass cake dish
2 9 x 9 inch cake pans
1 syringe (Optional)
1 package of nuts, walnuts or almonds (all are optional)
1 box Of vanilla ice cream (optional)

Bake cake using two 9 x 9 cake pans according to the directions on the box. Let cool for at least 15 minutes. Microwave frosting for 35 seconds. In the large glass cake dish, using a syringe or a spoon, drizzle 4 tablespoons of the melted frosting all over the bottom. Sprinkle a few chocolate chips on the dish also. ** Crumble the cooled chocolate cake to make it resemble dirt. Place half of it in the dish. Drizzle more icing and sprinkle more chocolate chips on top of the cake. Sprinkle nuts (optional). Add a few gummy worms **. Repeat the section beginning and ending with stars one time. To Serve: Break Hershey bars into 3 pieces each. Place one piece at the bottom of a bowl. Layer on 2 scoops of vanilla ice cream. Place dirt cake on top. Top off with a gummy worm. ENJOY ! ! !

When I was a kid, I was at a party and the mom served dirt ice cream cake in individual flower pots. They put a layer of chocolate cake on the bottom, crumbled oreos, chocolate/vanilla ice cream, and then crumbled oreos again. There were gummy worms hidden throughout. Then, there was a fake flower sticking up through the dirt, with a gummy worm coming out too. The presentation is something I will never forget and it was so good!

I used to make dirt too. I know it's pudding, cool whip & crushed oreos. I don't have the recipe on hand but I know it's always advertised with Jell-O Pudding. Maybe try googling it or see if they have a web site. I remember going to the dollar store and getting a flower pot and putting the dirt in there with the gummy worms.

Your husband could still do the monkey cake and then maybe make cupcakes and do green sprinkles (grass) and see if you can find small animals at the $ store or another store and put one animal on each cupcake. The cupcakes could be for the kids and then they could keep the animal.

I would just get juice boxes for the kids. It's easier. Bring a sharpie marker to write the kids name on the juice box.

J.,
Sounds like fun! Here's a dirt recipe. You could use little monkeys instead of worms...
WORM DIRT CAKE
1 to 1 1/4 lb. pkg. Oreo cookies
1 (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
3 cups milk
1 (12 oz.) tub Cool Whip (can use chocolate)
2 (3 1/2 oz.) pkg. instant vanilla or chocolate pudding
1/2 tsp. vanilla
4 gummy worms and/or other critters
This popular "novelty" cake is a hit at children's parties, especially around Halloween. You'll receive many appreciate compliments from your guests such as "Ewww, that's gross!"

It really resembles a pudding more than it does a conventional cake. If you serve it as an everyday family dessert, rather than as a fun decorative element, it's possible that your family may not understand it!

Crush Oreos. Put 1/3 of the crushed Oreos into a new, clean flower pot. Set aside.

Mix butter, cream cheese and sugar and vanilla together. Set aside.

Combine milk and pudding mix. Fold Cool Whip into the pudding.

Fold together pudding mixture and butter-cream cheese mixture.

Layer this mixture (about 1/3 of it) onto the crumbled cookies in the pot. Next, add another layer of the pudding mixture, then another layer of cookie crumbs, continuing until all ingredients are used.

As you're layering the ingredients, decoratively place several gummy worms and critters in the "soil" so they will be seen emerging. If you have a toy (clean) garden trowel, a plastic daisy, or some edible flowers, these can also be used creatively to embellish the presentation.

Chill in refrigerator for 3 to 4 hours before serving.

Also, here's a drink punch called "Jungle Juice":

Jungle Juice (a non-alcoholic lemonade)
Ingredients:

3 oranges
4 lemons
3 limes
1-2 cups sugar
cold water to fill the rest of the pitcher
ice

Directions:

This is super easy, refreshing and yummy!

Fill the pitcher about halfway up with ice.

Cut oranges, lemons, and limes in half and SQUEEZE the life out of them into the pitcher.

Fill up the rest of the pitcher with water, and then add sugar to taste.

Great, and ready to serve immediately!

Serves: 1 pitcher

Preparation time: 5 min.

Check out Oriental Trading Company if you need jungle themed favors... I ordered a bunch of cute stuff from their website for my son's birthday.

For dirt cake... here's my favorite recipe (I dont like the ones with cream cheese)

1 pkg oreos (crushed)
1 pkg instant chocolate pudding (larger size box)
1 tub cool whip
gummy worms
milk to make pudding

1. Make pudding as directed on box
2. Mix together 2/3 of the oreos, pudding, and 1/2 of the cool whip
3. Top with remaining cool whip
4. Sprinkle remaining cookies on top and garnish with worms

Hi Janmie,
I looked up your recipe for Dirt cake and the site you need to go to is www.cooks.com/rec/search and put in Dirt Cake and it'll take you to the recipe section. Good luck with your party. The only other idea I have is to buy or make a sheet cake and go to a toy store or $ store and buy the wild animals your kids like and put them all around the cake. you can put plastic fences around them and color coconut with food coloring for hay/or grass and this would look neat . I've done this for my daughters when they where little they where into horses so I colored coconut with food coloring and bought a sheet cake and just put my own animals on it. The girls loved it.
Good luck.
J.

You don't mention how old the children are, but I like cupcakes for mid-age kids. You can do one of two ways - do your own in advance or let the kids decorate their own (but it sounds like they may already be busy with the stuffed animals). Anyway, you can do a quick google search for ideas, e.g. I searched for "lion cupcake" and got these cute examples . . .
http://www.flickr.com/photos/schneiderclan/2408390991/
http://jas.familyfun.go.com/recipefinder/display?id=50077
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kwannon/233529620/
Of course, to save time you could always adapt one of these ideas to make one big cake instead of a lot of cupcakes . . .

I just had a safari party for my son last year and it was the best party of the year! I had cupcakes and put a worm in each of them. They also have googly eyes that you can plac in the cupcakes. You can put rainbow sherbert in punch and call it jungle punch. I actually had a skall swimming pool and put jouce boxes and pouches in it within ice and threw in snakes and lizards and jungle insects. I also had jungle and animal sounds playing in the background.