Candy Corn Layered Pudding Dessert Idea

This simple fall layered pudding dessert is designed to look like cute candy corn treats! They’re super easy to make, taste yummy, and a fun treat for kids to help with and eat! You can either make it in a large trifle bowl for one large dessert or make individual servings!

We broke out all of the fall decorations this weekend, and I realized that I have a lot of fun candy corn decorations! And I realized that I made this fun candy corn treat like six years ago and totally forgotten about it!

I updated this post to make it easier to make this for a crowd rather than using the pudding Snack Packs I originally used – now it’s good for making for a party easily! Who knows, it may just be one of your new favorite fall party ideas!

I loved this recipe when I originally created it years ago but love it even more now with the use of actual pudding and colored sugars (they taste so good!).

The best thing about these is that they literally took me less than five minutes to make, and when I have a million other things to do to get ready for a party, I can use all the five minute recipes I can get.

These would be a fun fall treat for your kids or you can make up a bunch and serve them at a party – they make great Halloween party ideas.

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

• Kid-friendly – this one is great for Halloween classroom parties because it’s easy to make for individual kids!
• Cute – I’m a huge fan of cute Halloween treats like these ghost brownies and these Halloween rice krispies. These candy corn pudding cups go right along with those treats but also work great for just general fall parties or even Thanksgiving!
• Super easy – if you can make instant pudding, you can make this layered pudding dessert. Seriously, they’re so easy to make!

Ingredients

Ingredient Notes

• Milk – make sure your milk is cold (not sure why it wouldn’t be). I typically like to leave it in the fridge until right before I add to the pudding mix. I recommend whole milk so it has more thickness to it!
• Vanilla Instant Pudding – make sure it’s instant pudding mix, not regular pudding mix that takes hours to set. You can use either regular vanilla or French vanilla, doesn’t really matter as long as the pudding has a yellow color to it when made. Use any leftover pudding to make this copycat grey stuff recipe or no bake pumpkin pie!
• Food coloring – I prefer using a gel food coloring for this but you can use either gel or liquid, really doesn’t matter that much. You’ll only need orange since the pudding is already slightly yellow colored. If you want your candy corn to be bright yellow, you could also add yellow food coloring.
• Cool Whip – Cool Whip is the easiest for this but you could also use a homemade whipped cream if you’d like. I don’t recommend using the spray whipped cream because it tends to melt and deflate really quickly, losing that candy corn look.
• Colored sugars and candy corn – these are optional and used just for decorating the layered pudding desserts. If you don’t have them, don’t stress. Just decorate with what you have or don’t decorate at all! If you do want to use colored sugar, I like this brand.

You’ll also need something to serve the candy corn pudding cups in. You can either do it in individual cup (I recommend plastic 7-oz cups if it’s for a small group of plastic 5-oz cups for a larger group for this recipe) or you can do a bigger layered pudding dessert in a trifle bowl that people can just serve themselves from!

If you’re serving these at a teen or adult party, you could totally do them in little glass trifle dishes or even small mason jars – just avoid the glass with the younger kiddos.

How to Make A Candy Corn Layered Pudding Dessert

I bet you can guess how I made them, but I’m going to show you anyway because it’s really just fun. And this is something your kids could easily help you with, a fun edible craft!

Start by mixing both packages of the pudding mix into a bowl with the milk. Mix and chill according to the package directions for pudding (not pie filling). This typically includes mixing completely then chilling in the fridge for 5-10 minutes until the pudding is set.

The pudding should be a nice yellow color and thick when it’s ready.

Split the pudding so that there are two cups of pudding in one bowl and four cups of pudding in another. In the bowl with more pudding, add five drops of orange food coloring, mixing between each drop until you get to the color of orange you’re looking for.

Once you have both colors of pudding, spoon a small amount of the yellow pudding into the bottom of your cups. I did about four spoons full of the yellow pudding for the seven ounce cups. If you’re doing a trifle bowl, just layer all the pudding inside.

Next, add about double the amount (eight spoons full if using 7 oz cups) of the orange pudding on top of the yellow pudding, trying your best to make nice even layers.

The goal is to have your cup be 1/3 yellow, just about 2/3 orange, and then space for the white on top.

f you get any of the pudding on the edge of the glass, just take a wet paper towel and carefully wipe it off or you won’t have the pretty candy corn layers at the end.

Finally, top the pudding with Cool Whip or fresh whipped cream on top to add that white cap of a piece of candy corn. If you want it to be pretty, you can put the Cool Whip into a piping bag with a star piping tip then pipe it on top. It would look more like the triangle top of a candy corn that way.

But if you don’t want to do that, just adding some Cool Whip on top works as well!

Finish the treats off by decorating with colored sugars, candy corn, and anything else that you think looks cute!

Expert Tips

Make the first two layers ahead of time then add the Cool Whip or whipped cream right before serving to keep it as a fresh as possible.

Keep the decorations to just colored sugar and maybe one piece of candy corn if you pipe on the Cool Whip. Adding too many decorations will defeat the purpose of the pretty piped frosting.

Store pudding cups in the fridge until ready to serve. These are best served chilled although they’d be fine for a couple of hours while serving at a party.

Top extra pudding cups with plastic wrap and store in the fridge. I like to put them in muffin tins and put in the refrigerator so they don’t accidentally get knocked over.

Recipe FAQs

More Fall Treats

If you need even more fall treats for your fall celebrations, you’ll love these other options!

• Pumpkin crunch cake – the ultimate fall dump cake that’s made with just a few ingredients! Great with vanilla ice cream!
• Caramel apple bar ideas – make caramel apples easier to make and enjoy with this fun caramel apple board idea!
• Pretty apple pie – it’s just as delicious and it is pretty and that’s saying something because this is a beautiful fall pie!
• Caramel apple drink – this fancy yet kid-friendly drink is a really fun one for any fall parties or even Thanksgiving!
• Chocolate turkeys for Thanksgiving – these darling turkeys are a fun treat to make with the kids, made out of just simple candies and chocolate!

Recipe Update: This post was originally written using individual Snack Pack pudding packs and has since been updated to use instant pudding mix. All photos have also been updated but an original photo is below for your reference.