This chocolate pudding cake recipe has been a stand-by in my kitchen for nearly 15 years.
Mostly because it was the only dessert I knew how to make back in my “Jill hates cooking” days.
(If you had told me back then that I’d write a cookbook, I would have firmly said you were ridiculous and insane…)
But I digress.
This chocolate pudding cake is rustic, sturdy, and no-nonsense. And I haven’t shared it with you before mostly because it’s just not beautiful... aka, it doesn’t photograph well.
But we can’t hold that against it, can we?
The #1 compliment I get on my cookbook is that it contains “normal, everyday ingredients”, and this pudding cake recipe absolutely fits that bill.
It’s a “pantry recipe”– which means you can pretty much make it at any old time, no special ingredients or trip to the store required. And, it’s easy enough that a free-range four-year old can help you make it, as you will see illustrated in the photos.
Those four-year olds in the kitchen, man… it can be stressful. Thankfully, this recipe is REALLY hard to mess up.
**Before you make this recipe, be sure to read through the whole thing. There will be a part of the process where you freak out and say “Jill lied to me and this is a disaster!!” and I want you to be prepared for that moment.**
Chocolate Pudding Cake Recipe
Yield: One 9×9-inch cake
Ingredients:
Batter Mixture:
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 cup whole milk
- 3/4 cup unrefined whole cane sugar (see notes)
- 2 tablespoons butter, melted
Pudding Mixture:
- 1 cup unrefined whole cane sugar (see notes)
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder
- 1 3/4 cups hot water
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Combine all of the batter ingredients and spread them into a 9×9-inch baking dish. (And 8×8-inch will work in a pinch, too.)
Mix 1 cup of unrefined whole cane sugar and the 1/4 cup of cocoa powder in a small bowl. Sprinkle this mixture over the top of the batter mixture. (It will seem like there’s WAY TOO MUCH. Just roll with it.)
Now comes the crazy part:
Pour 1 3/4 cups of hot water (doesn’t have to be boiling– hot tap water is fine) over the entire thing.
It will resemble a chocolate swamp. And that’s OK. We’re going for the full-on swamp vibe here.
Fight the urge to mix it together.
Just avoid looking at it and put it in the oven.
Bake for 45 minutes or until the top of the cake is firm, and well, “cake-like.”
The cake will be a gooey mixture of cake and chocolate pudding which somehow materialized from the cocoa/water soup while it was in the oven. It’s magic, I tell ya.
Serve immediately while warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, or a drizzle of heavy cream.
Chocolate Pudding Cake Notes:
- I use sucanat (a whole cane sugar with a molasses flavor) for almost all of my baking. If you don’t have it, just use regular brown sugar in this recipe.
- This recipe can easily be doubled to fit a 9×13 pan.
- I have experimented making this recipe gluten-free and dairy-free and it worked well. I simply used a gluten-free all-purpose flour in place of the regular flour and coconut milk instead of cow milk.
- I’ve also heard this recipe called “chocolate cobbler”, but we’ve always just called it that “goopy pudding cake thing”
Chocolate Pudding Cake Recipe
Batter Mixture:
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 cup whole milk
- 3/4 cup unrefined whole cane sugar (see notes)
- 2 tablespoons butter, melted
Pudding Mixture:
- 1 cup unrefined whole cane sugar (see notes)
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder
- 1 3/4 cups hot water
Ingredients
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Combine all of the batter ingredients and spread them into a 9×9-inch baking dish. (And 8×8-inch will work in a pinch, too.)
Mix 1 cup of unrefined whole cane sugar and the 1/4 cup of cocoa powder in a small bowl. Sprinkle this mixture over the top of the batter mixture. (It will seem like there’s WAY TOO MUCH.)
Now comes the crazy part:
Pour 1 3/4 cups of hot water (doesn’t have to be boiling– hot tap water is fine) over the entire thing.
It will resemble a chocolate swamp. And that’s OK. We’re going for the full-on swamp vibe here.
Fight the urge to mix it together, pour off some of the water, or throw it away.
Just don’t look at it and put it in the oven.
Bake for 45 minutes or until the top of the cake is firm, and well, “cake-like.”
The cake will be a gooey mixture of cake and chocolate pudding which somehow materialized from the cocoa/water soup while it was in the oven. It’s magic, I tell ya.
Serve immediately while warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, or a drizzle of heavy cream.
Looks great!!
This is one of my favorite recipes from childhood. We called it “Brownie Pudding”. My mother and grandmother made this fairly often. I love that it’s in my grandmother’s recipe box, handwritten on an old index card , I was thrilled to see you make it and post it. It’s an oldie but a goody!
That’s a great name for it! 🙂 I’m so glad you have the recipe in your grandmother’s handwriting! There’s something so special about handwritten recipes!
Our hot fudge pudding cake used 1/2 cup milk and 2tbl s of melted butter in the cake batter along with a cup of chopped nuts. Brown sugar was used in the sprinkle mixture and regular sugar in the cake batter. I’m going to try it with half brown sugar and half sugar free brown sugar.
Yum! Those sound like great adjustments!
So happy to see this. Grew up eating this, we called it hot fudge pudding cake. It was a favorite. However the recipe I grew up with relied on a bisquick like starter that I do not use in my kitchen since I like to do things from scratch. I have thought of it over the years and wished to have a similar recipe that did not require ingredients I avoid. I can’t wait to make a double batch of this for the family (big family full of teens). I just might need to do that tonight.
So glad to hear this version suits you better! Hopefully you enjoyed it!
I grew up with this as Brownie Pudding. It was such a treat to have this for dessert with vanilla ice cream. I’m going to make this for tonight.
I looked all through the recipe and comments and I didn’t see anything about the unrefined cane sugar in notes.
What notes?
In the recipe notes, it defines unrefined cane sugar:
“I use sucanat (a whole cane sugar with a molasses flavor) for almost all of my baking. If you don’t have it, just use regular brown sugar in this recipe.”
There are other notes as well. They follow the pictorial directions, just above the recipe, so if you skipped directly to the recipe, I believe that you might have missed them.
This was the best simple little cake ever. My niece is allergic to dairy is there anything you think I could sub the milk with?
A creamy non-dairy milk should do the trick!
This is such a drool-worthy recipe. The technique of creating a hot water swamp is fantastic. I could taste the cake while reading the method itself. I will try this today itself and post feedback. When i was learning some new photography techniques from https://www.bloghasting.com/, i casually checked on your recipe. But now i want to make a similar one.
Can’t you use coconut flour?
Do not use coconut flour as a one to one substitute. It is an entirely different animal from other flours. Research it
Jill, must same is very similar to the Pudding cake my mom made for years till her death in the 90s. I know she used brown sugar for the pudding. And you are right, it did look like a mess at 1st but was a great treat for all of us.
Jill, when you say “pour off some of the water, or just throw it away”, I’m not sure what you mean? How much water do you take off the top of the cake? Do you just tip the cake over the sink and pour it out?
Toni Melvin, you don’t pour off any of the water. She said to “fight the urge to pour off water” Go and re-read the instructions ? Looks like a yummy recipe!
“Fight the urge to mix it together, pour off some of the water, or throw it away. ”
Above is a copy and paste from the recipe directions in Jill’s post above.
I still don’t have clarity on how much water to pour off.
What Staecy said!
Kayla ~
Here is a direct copy and paste from Jill’s above recipe
“Fight the urge to mix it together, pour off some of the water, or throw it away.”
So, I still don’t have clarity on what that sentence means…
can you help?
That sentence is a bit confusing, but the point is to NOT pour off any water. Leave it as is.
“Fight the urge to mix it together, pour off some of the water, or throw it away.” This is sarcasm. It means it looks wrong but it is exactly the way it should look. Do as instructed and just put it in the oven without pouring off anything!
I am sure this is so good warm with vanilla ice cream. YUM!
sounds like a satisfying chocolate craving dessert to me! Any suggestions to replace the sucanet sugar with maple syrup? Thanks again for another great recipe
You can see how to sub for maple syrup here: https://soulyrested.com/2019/07/14/substituting-maple-syrup-for-sugar/
Jill, must same is very similar to the Pudding cake my mom made for years till her death in the 90s. I know she used brown sugar for the pudding. And you are right, it did look like a mess at 1st but was a great treat for all of us. Also mom always made it in a 9×13 pan – had a family of 11
It’s a great dessert to feed a crowd!
I just put mine in the oven. I have not made this recipe in a pan before, I’ve only made it in a crockpot. I’m excited to have this for dessert tonight for our family movie night. I wish we had vanilla ice cream, but we can settle for the spray cream this time. I will have to buy some vanilla ice cream and hide for from the kids and keep it for the topping of this recipe next time.
Naomi, do you put your frozen vegetables in the bottom drawer of your freezer. That is where I hide the ice cream, at the back of the drawer of frozen vegetables, the one place they will never look!
Too funny!
Sounds similar to a berry cobbler recipe where you pour hot water over the mixture before baking. I will be trying this.
Thanks Jill, I will be making this with my 5 year old this weekend! She loves anything chocolate and we only do dessert on weekends. Might pair it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Yay! And yes, definitely add a scoop of ice cream!
Yep, you were right—not pretty 🙂 That’s A LOT of sugar. Have you ever tried with less?
As wonderful as that gooey yumminess looks… I was thinking the same thing! So much sweetener?
Cari shared above how she cut down the sugar a bit… “I made recipe tonight cutting batter mixture sugar to 1/2 cup and the pudding mixture sugar to 3/4 cup. It was sweet enough. Everyone likes it and we didn’t eat ice cream etc. along with it.
I also added 1 tsp vanilla extract to the pudding mixture water.”
I made recipe tonight cutting batter mixture sugar to 1/2 cup and the pudding mixture sugar to 3/4 cup. It was sweet enough. Everyone likes it and we didn’t eat ice cream etc. along with it.
I also added 1 tsp vanilla extract to the pudding mixture water.
Those sound like great options for changes!
If that’s a better option for you, Cari shared above how she cut down the sugar a bit… “I made recipe tonight cutting batter mixture sugar to 1/2 cup and the pudding mixture sugar to 3/4 cup. It was sweet enough. Everyone likes it and we didn’t eat ice cream etc. along with it.
I also added 1 tsp vanilla extract to the pudding mixture water.”
I received this exact recipe from my Mother when I got married, 65 years ago. It was my go to when the kids were little. Glad to see it’s still around.
How neat! Thanks for sharing!
Could this be made with almond milk instead of coconut milk for the nondairy option?
Try oatmilk if you need a non-dairy substitute? Almond milk won’t have enough fat in it. Or try full fat canned coconut milk. But oatmilk is my vegan go to.
Great tip for a dairy-free substitute! Thanks for sharing, Melissa!
I made this tonight for our valentines dessert, using the oat milk. It was soooo sweet though. I will cut the sugar in half next time I think. Otherwise, I love the whole messy process and watching the magic happen in the oven. Have you ever halved the recipe? There is only the two of us and we don’t do desert a lot.
Yes! That’s a great dairy-free option.
This what my family called chocolate upside-down cake. We got our recipe from a tourist cookbook from the Ozarks back in the ‘60s This cake is for serious chocolate lovers and you won’t be disappointed.
Bring on the chocolate!
Yep! Good old Betty Crocker recipe. I’ve had that cookbook since I got married in 1968 and used that recipe a number of times. It’s rich, so I usually try to reduce the amount of sugar, too. Also have a lemon version that I haven’t made yet. Got to try it soon!
A lemon version sounds good! I don’t know if it sounds better than the chocolate version, though…. 🙂
I remember my Mom making it with lemon too. Would you share that version of the recipe?
Oh my goodness! How can she be 4 already?!? ? We will definitely enjoy this cake!
Is it still good when it is cold? With only two of us we wouldn’t be able to eat it all while still warm!
Yup, still good. I prefer it heated up, though.
I used to make this in an electric frying pan (remember those??) forty years ago! Thanks for bringing it to mind again.
Yes! Oh my goodness, how funny! I hope you try it as a blast from the past! 🙂
This recipe resembles the very popular chocolate fudge cake that we make here in PA, in fact l think it’s identical but l have to check to make sure. ? but l know l usually sprinkle the sugar mixture on top and pour water over it. So good with whipped cream, ice cream or milk.
You are right: it does NOT photograph well! Fortunately, your precious daughter does. (Legos on the table while preparing – real life!)
We will be making this recipe soon and I am sure we will enjoy it.
Thanks,
Laurie
Thanks for your support! 🙂
How neat! It’s so good with ice cream, isn’t it?
Can you double this to fill a 9×13?
Go for it! If you try it, let us know how it comes out! (If it’s the right amount to fill up the pan.)
Do you grease your pan before you put the batter in?
No need!
My cousin taught me this one back in the early 80s, but she called it ‘crazy cake’. But it’s the easiest, chocolatiest dessert on the planet!
So true! Yum. Bring on the chocolate!
I followed your directions “exactly” but ended up having all the liquid (that was suppose to end up pudding) underneath the cakes as a thick liquid. What in the world could I have done wrong?
That happened to me as well! I baked it an extra 5 minutes in case it just wasn’t done yet, then took it out and pushed down the top cake layer with a spoon, letting the “pudding” (it was thin) come to the top. My girls still liked it, but it definitely didn’t seem right. Of course, the extra 5 minutes gave it that slightly burned chocolate flavor. The pudding did thicken a little while cooling.
That is exactly what is supposed to happen. It’s a combination of cake and pudding. The cake layer rises to the top & the pudding is underneath. You did it right!
It’s nice when you see such a great work! Continue writing
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Oh man! Grew up on that stuff! Mom called it Hasty Pudding and said it was a depression era recipe they used. With all the rations and just lack of food back then they didn’t add eggs and I suspect the sugar was limited too. This recipe is the closest I’ve seen to her recipe.
A big thanks to Jill, for sharing the recipe. This looks yummy. I could image the taste of the cake while reading through the method. I remember my mom baking the same for us with Vanilla topping, and she would call it, “a Brownie Pudding”. In the coming weekend, I will surely bake one with my 6-year-old daughter.
A big thanks to Jill, for sharing the recipe it remembers my childhood. It is my favorite recipes since my childhood. My mother used to make it for us, It’s nice when you see such a great work! Keep posting!
So glad you liked this cake!
It is a very easy recipe, first we heat the milk with the tablespoon of cocoa powder and the zest of the orange. We let it heat but without boiling, over very low heat (about 10 minutes).
Hi, is this using unsalted butter or regular (salted) butter?
I just made this. It tastes amazing! But it didn’t turn out like a pudding. It was like a brownie floating on a sea of hot chocolate. Yummy. But not like pudding. The only thing I changed was that I used a gluten free 1:1 instead of flour.
I’m wondering if cacao powder would work the same as cocoa powder.
Would this work to put candles in for a birthday cake? I’m doing a sundae bar and thought this would compliment that as a substitute for a regular cake/cupcakes/brownies but def need something that can handle some candles.