What Is Old-Fashioned Pudding Cake?

Served up warm from the oven, this nostalgic cake makes its own pudding-like sauce to warm souls and bellies, just like grandma intended.

By

Amy Barnes

Published on August 25, 2021

What Is Pudding Cake?

On the surface, a pudding cake looks like a simple cake. But, as Granny spooned it hot from the oven onto our plates, the super-moist chocolate cake revealed its secret: a pudding-like sauce that formed on the bottom of the pan. Two desserts in one. What kid wouldn't like that? My sister and I definitely did. Sometimes, we topped it with vanilla ice cream but most often we just let the cake shine as we ate it immediately. I remember going back for seconds, my tongue still a little scalded, spoon digging directly into the Pyrex pan.

Why Is It Called Pudding Cake?

The name of my magical childhood "pudding cake" dessert is a bit of a misnomer. While the cake part is obvious, you actually don't add premade pudding or even pudding mix. The cake makes its own pudding or sauce. As a kid, I always helped make the cake, a simple recipe — measuring, stirring, pouring — but holiday fun always pulled me away before I learned my grandmother's magic secrets. As an adult, I couldn't remember what step "made the pudding" in a pudding cake. I went searching online and read recipes to see what that process was.

How Do You Make Pudding Cake?

It turns out making the pudding for a pudding cake is a simple two-step process after you put the batter in the pan. First, sprinkle a mixture of sugar (brown or cane) and cocoa (or a powdered version of the cake's flavoring) over the completed batter. Then, the magic begins with the second step: gently pouring boiling hot water over that topping. As the cake bakes, the mix of hot water and cocoa/sugar melts down through the cake to form a "sauce" or "pudding" on the bottom.

Tip: An alternate method is to mix the cocoa and sugar in a bowl with the boiling water and pour that over the batter. I've always found it easier to do the steps separately but a recipe like this brownie pudding cake also works.

Pudding cake doesn't have to be chocolate. Try this Lemon Pudding Cake flavored with fresh lemon juice, or this Cinnamon Pudding Cake made with apples and walnuts. For a fruity take on pudding cake, this Blackberry Pudding Cake can be made with your choice of fresh or frozen berries.

Best Served Hot

One of the downfalls of pudding cake (and the holidays) is they are both temporary. Pudding cake has a big magic moment just like opening up a favorite gift. That special sauce that oozes around chocolate pudding cake is not like revenge; it is not best served cold. While my grandmother always sent home extra-extra-extra-dark biscuits, ham slices, and scalloped potatoes, the leftover cake didn't come home with us. The pudding magic that occurred directly out of the oven became a muddy mixture once it cooled. Eating pudding cake hot out of the oven is the way to go, holiday or not.

As I think back to my grandmother's pudding cake, I don't remember it having a name. It was just "the pudding cake." We only had it a couple of times a year, for Easter and Christmas, but it was special — warm, comforting, and celebratory. Making this special cake on special occasions for my own kids now, my first bite is always the slightly burnt edges in honor of my grandmother.