This rich chocolate pudding cake recipe is the perfect dessert for chocolate lovers!
Old Fashioned Chocolate Pudding Cake
The homemade chocolate pudding cake might just be the best chocolate recipe ever, because you get two delicious chocolate desserts at the same time!
A layer of gooey dark chocolate cake hides thick and creamy chocolate pudding underneath. When I first learned about the extraordinary chocolate dessert, I knew that I needed to try it as soon as possible.
Who wouldn’t fall in love with a recipe that is both cake and pudding, with no need to choose one over the other? Life is already filled with enough difficult decisions!
Try topping the cake with Coconut Milk Ice Cream
Chocolate Cake Ingredients
Having never made any sort of pudding cake before, I first looked to a chocolate pudding cake recipe in Taste of Home as a reference.
Never one to follow a recipe, I then changed it completely, cutting back on the sugar and adding extra cocoa powder, because more chocolate is always a good idea.
Adding pure vanilla extract heightens the recipe’s flavor and sweetness.
I also made mine egg free and decreased the fat considerably. The original version called for butter, which can be substituted with vegetable or coconut oil, or peanut butter or almond butter if preferred.
To make a vegan pudding cake: To make this a plant based dessert, use your favorite nondairy milk for the liquid and vegan chocolate chips if you opt to add those. Just like with my Vegan Chocolate Cake, there are no eggs required for the pudding cake.
For a low carb or keto recipe: Try this reader favorite recipe for chocolate Keto Cake. Or if you want to experiment, I haven’t tried the pudding cake recipe below with almond flour so be sure to report back with results if you do try it.
Gluten free pudding cake: The recipe works with all purpose gluten free flour. If you try any other gluten free or grain free flours – such as sorghum flour, coconut flour, or oat flour – with success, leave a comment below and I will update this post.
For sugar free pudding cake: Feel free to use granulated xylitol or erythritol instead of sugar, and use an unsweetened milk such as almondmilk. Omit the optional chocolate chips or use sugar free chocolate chips.
How to Make Pudding Cake for Dessert
To bake the chocolate pudding cake in an oven, first preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease an 8-inch baking pan.
Stir together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, granulated sugar, and optional instant coffee in a large mixing bowl.
Add in the milk, oil or nut butter, and pure vanilla extract. Stir until just evenly combined. (Over-mixing can cause baked goods to be overly chewy and tough.)
Pour the batter into the prepared pan.
Stir the remaining four tablespoons of brown sugar or sweetener into the boiling water. Then pour this water mixture on top of the cake batter in the baking pan, but do not stir it into the batter.
Place the pan in the middle rack of the oven, and bake for 35 minutes. It will look like a regular chocolate cake on top when you take it out.
If you reach your spoon into the chocolate cake, you will find a layer of rich chocolate pudding underneath!
Looking for a non chocolate recipe? Try this Applesauce Cake
Chocolate Pudding Cake in a Crock Pot
Don’t want to heat up the oven? No problem, just use a slow cooker or crock pot!
Start by greasing the bowl of your slow cooker. Set it aside. (Note: The recipe was tested in a 4-quart crockpot.)
Stir all of the ingredients except the four tablespoons additional sweetener and the boiling water in the machine, just until evenly combined. Do not over-mix.
Dissolve the brown sugar or sweetener in the water. Pour over the top of the batter in the crock pot, but do not stir at all.
Close the lid and cook on high for one and a half hours. Turn off the machine, and open the lid slightly. Let it sit another full hour with the lid opened just barely to let some of the steam escape. The cake and pudding will thicken during this time.
Baking and Storage Tips for Success
If you want to make changes to the recipe below, I highly recommend making it once according to directions and not omitting or cutting back on any ingredient. This way you’ll know how the taste and texture are supposed to turn out and will have a baseline to compare the two versions.
For freshness, it’s best to store leftovers in a covered container or covered crock pot in the refrigerator. It can be left out for a few hours if serving to guests.
The crock pot dessert will be more like pudding the first day, but if you let it cool completely and then refrigerate overnight, it gets much thicker and creamier by the following day.
Above, watch the chocolate pudding cake recipe video
Chocolate Pudding Cake
Ingredients
- 1 cup spelt, white, oat, or gf all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 3/4 cup granulated sweetener of choice
- 1 tsp instant coffee powder, optional
- 1 1/2 cups milk of choice
- 1/4 cup oil, butter, or nut butter
- 2 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 2 cups boiling water
- 1/4 cup brown sugar or any granulated sweetener
- 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips, optional
Instructions
- *If you prefer to make the recipe in a crock pot, see directions earlier in the post.Pudding cake recipe: Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease an 8-inch baking pan. Stir all ingredients together except the water and 1/4 cup sweetener. Don't over-mix. Pour into the pan. Mix the 1/4 cup sweetener into the boiling water. Pour this over the batter in the pan, but do not stir it into the batter at all. Bake on the oven's center rack for 35 minutes. Let cool. The pudding layer underneath will get thicker as it sits. (I store leftovers in the fridge, and it thickens even more overnight.)View Nutrition Facts
Video
Notes
Easy Chocolate Desserts
I think the nutrition facts may be incorrect for this recipe. I entered it into the recipe builder on my fitness pal and even using the lowest calorie options (stevia instead of the brown sugar, almond milk, etc), it totaled it at 140 calories per each serving of 10 servings.
It does look amazing though! 🙂
Katie, this looks so enticing I’m thinking about making it today or tomorrow. Do you know how long this will stay good, refrigerated? Although you have it listed as making 10 servings, judging by measurements and quantities, I imagine it will make about 3 servings for me, max. Since I won’t be sharing, though, so there’s a chance it will last a couple of days. Thanks!
I made it and it was still good three days later 🙂
Wow! This looks delicous! How could I substitute stevia for the sugar? I would be using Stevia in the Raw. Thanks!
Please tell me I’m not the only guy who follows this blog?
Thats right, a STRAIGHT guy who likes baking.. 😉
You are not the only one. I love this blog!
Thank you for yet another crazy delicious recipe. I just made this today and am having a terrible time trying not to eat the whole thing at once!
I have no crock pot, but an aga. What is high temperature for a crock pot, or even microwave settings? And would it need to be covered? Crock pots have lids so should my mix if it goes in the oven/microwave?
I’m no baker sadly, but this is something i have to try!
I think you’ll have to experiment to find the perfect time 🙂
Crock pots don’t actually say what the temperature is, at least mine doesn’t.
Where were u all these days! gosh I adore love and am completely nuts about chocolate. Can I use Nutella in ur recipes which require peanut butter? I do like peanut butter but …addicted to nutella.
Not Katie, but I think that should be perfectly fine!
I am in love with your website! My Mom found out she was allergic to milk about a year ago and yet in the last three days she has had 4 ingredient ice cream and will be having pudding cake tonight. I had to sample it to make sure it was good first. 😉
Ma ma mercy, I made this yesterday and have been sampling it all morning. The official devouring time is scheduled for later in the evening to celebrate the mother-in-law’s birthday. Of note, I did NOT use my crock pot for this. I searched the web a bit and ventured to make this in a greased 8 x 8 pan in the oven on 350 for about 45 minutes. It came out perfect. I also subbed in 1/4 cup of coconut oil and threw in a handful of shredded coconut since the M-in-L likes a chocolate coconut combo.
Thank you for posting the changed baking method, Shannon, and for posting what looks to be an amazing recipe, Katie! When you mentioned Shannon that you subbed in the coconut oil, did you do that in addition to 4tbs in the recipe or instead of? I have to hit the nail on on the head first try because I’m making it for a party of 80 as a last minute change since it looks so decadent…thanks for your feedback! There’s a lot of positive feedback from those wanting to try the recipe, but it was great to get some info from those who already have. Katie’s recipes are so fabulous that I know I could go for it without feedback, of course, but since I don’t have enough crock pots for 80 servings, this helps immensely!!
Whoops, I meant coconut flour. So I used 1/4 c coconut flour and 3/4 c white flour. And I agree, I generally trust Katie’s recipes implicitly but I thought it would be helpful to post specific feedback in case others didn’t want to use a crock pot. I’ve also made this recipe again (with no substitutions) but I halved it and baked it in a bread pan. Still amazing.
For all microwavers and single-serving lovers: cut all ingredients, except the water, by 10. If possible, use a scale a scale for this. For those of you who don’t have a scale, it will be much harder to estimate, but you can get quite inexpensive ones at Target/Walmart/etc. I highly recommend investing!
Weight-wise, this all comes out to 13 g of all-purpose flour, a pinch of salt (I used kosher), 1 g of baking powder (roughly 1/4 tsp), 4 g cocoa powder (about 1 tbsp), a generous pinch of instant coffee granules, 12-15 g sweetener (I used 2 tsp of sugar and 1 tsp truvia), 7 g applesauce, 36 g of almond milk, 1-2 g vanilla, and 7-9 g mini chocolate chips.
Follow the directions above, mixing the mini chips in at the end. I microwaved this in a glass parfait dish for 90 seconds at about half power, and probably could have gone up to 2 minutes (or let it sit after taking it out). The top will be cooked with a few air bubbles, the bottom will still be quite undercooked. Depending on how soupy you like your chocolate (my favorite way to eat it!), scoop the cooked section onto a plate and drizzle then undercooked section on top. Nutrition is 140 calories, 3 g. fat from the chocolate chips, and 14 g of sugar. Delicious!
I didn’t enjoy your mug version much. It looks like these measurements are 1/8th of the recipe above, and since my scale is not quite precise enough, I measured by volume. I followed the original instructions, including pouring the boiling sugar water over top, and microwaved for 2 minutes. What I got was more gummy rather than cake or pudding. I’d recommend only the full batch and not microwaving.