OMG, this pudding cake.
Pumpkin + chocolate + brewed coffee + pumpkin pie spices + almond milk = heaven in a dish!
Heaven in a gluten-free, vegan dish, that is. And it’s easily made nut-free just by swapping out the almond milk for coconut milk. Want it soy-free too? Just use soy-free chocolate chips (such as Enjoy Life brand). Oh yea, and because I used moisture-rich pumpkin, this recipe is oil-free but you’d never know it.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of enjoying a chocolate pudding cake before, let me tell you what’s so magical about it: the chocolate cake creates its own chocolate pudding sauce as it bakes! Oh heck yes. It’s like having a sous chef in your very own kitchen. Why make chocolate sauce when the cake can make it for you?
Now that you’re drooling uncontrollably, let me show you just how easy it is to make…
Layer 3 (below) is when you might want to freak out because your cake looks like a hot mess. You will think you did something wrong, but you did everything right, my friends. It’s supposed to look like a hot mess. Don’t you wish all recipes were that easy? So dump on that hot coffee on top and marvel in the hot mess! I promise it will all work out in the end (see after photo). It’s like a magic trick.
See? Nothing to worry about here.
Don’t you just want to dig in with a big spoon?
I highly recommend (no, I beg) that you serve it with your favourite vanilla ice cream (I love Coconut Bliss Vanilla Island) and toasted pecans. The hot vs. cold, gooey vs. creamy contrast is to die for. You won’t be sorry.
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Gooey Pumpkin Spice Latte Chocolate Pudding Cake
Yield
6-8 servings
Prep time
Cook time
Total time
Coffee, pumpkin, pumpkin pie spices, and chocolate all combined in one gooey, saucy, pudding cake. What on earth could be better? Serve with a scoop of vegan ice cream and toasted pecans to take it over the edge. Be sure to see my notes at the end of this recipe for ways you can change it up. Recipe adapted from The Oh She Glows Cookbook.
Ingredients
- 1 flax egg: (1 tablespoon ground flax mixed with 3 tablespoons water)
- 1.5 cups rolled oats, ground into a flour (use certified gluten-free oats, if necessary)
- 3/4 cup coconut sugar
- 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/3 cup finely chopped non-dairy dark chocolate
- 1/2-3/4 teaspoon fine grain sea salt, to taste
- 1/2 tablespoon baking powder
- 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons almond milk
- 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons unsweetened pumpkin puree
- 1/2 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
- 1/4 cup coconut sugar
- 1 + 1/4 cup hot coffee (use decaf, if desired)
- For serving: vegan vanilla ice cream and toasted chopped pecans
Directions
- Preheat oven to 375⁰F and lightly grease an 8-inch square glass baking dish with oil.
- Whisk flax and water together in a small bowl and set aside for 5 minutes to gel up.
- In a large bowl, stir together the oat flour, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/3 cup cocoa powder, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, chocolate, salt, and baking powder.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the flax mixture, milk, pumpkin, and vanilla.
- Pour wet mixture onto dry ingredients and stir until thoroughly combined.
- Scoop the batter into the prepared glass dish and smooth out evenly with a spoon.
- In a small bowl or mug, combine the remaining tablespoon of cocoa powder and 1/4 cup sugar. Sprinkle all of it evenly over the cake batter.
- Slowly pour the hot coffee over the cocoa powder and sugar mixture ensuring that the coffee completely covers the powder and sugar. The cake will now look like a complete disaster, but this is normal. Promise!
- Very carefully place the dish into the oven, uncovered. Bake at 375⁰F for 25-40 minutes (see my post for the visual step by step pictures) until the cake is semi-firm on the top, but bubbly and gooey around the edges (see photo in blog post). It will look under-baked, but this is normal (we want it saucy!). If for whatever reason your cake is still watery after 30 minutes in the oven, keep baking it until it looks like the photo in the blog post.
- Let the cake cool for 10 minutes and then serve immediately with vegan vanilla ice cream and toasted pecans. This cake is best served warm straight out of the oven. I tried reheating leftovers in the oven the next day and the cake absorbed a lot of the sauce during the reheat. It was still good, but we preferred the cake the first day, fresh out of the oven. Leftovers are quite good served chilled, as an alternate suggestion.
Tip:
- You can probably swap the coconut sugar for natural cane sugar. The bake time may vary slightly since coconut sugar tends to be more dry.
- If you aren't a coffee fan, feel free to swap it with boiling water.
- To make this nut-free, swap the almond milk for coconut milk (or non-dairy milk of your choice) and leave out the pecan garnish.
- To make the oat flour, add the rolled oats into a high speed blender and blend on high until a fine flour forms. You can also use 1 1/2 cups + 2 tablespoons store-bought oat flour instead.
Nutrition Information
(click to expand)
Wishing all my fellow Canadian readers a very happy Thanksgiving weekend! It’s hard to believe it’s already here.
If you are looking for my vegan Thanksgiving recipes, see this post.
Can I use all purpose flour instead of oat flour? And can I sub in cinnamon tea instead of coffee? Thanks xx
I have tried this three times now. None have been what I would call success.
I’ve had the same experience as the others – cooks around the edges first and a large puddle of coffee in the middle. Had to cook it for an extra 10 or so mins – and while it was a little fudgy in the middle, the outside was dry.
Tasted beautiful each time though – and we enjoyed the flavours. And our ice cream helped to add creamy gooyness.. The kids loved it – and had it for lunch the next day each time with some “yoghurt” to keep it moist.
I’ve made the almost identical pudding in Angela’s book many many times and always successful, so there’s something about this pudding that’s more volatile. (there’s a lot more liquid in this batter than the recipe book version) So I think I’ll stick with the version I absolutely know I can depend on.
Fun to try out though. :-)
Would you be able to sub in a regular flour over the oat flour? Sadly my blender is not high speed enough to make oat flour.
Super Duper! I’m trying this next time!
We just indulged in a gooey chocolate pudding cake (from your book) and I really enjoyed it!
I swapped the sugar for dates (covered it with boiling water to soften and then mashed it), yum! Really liked the gooeyness! So easy to make, thank you!!!
So glad the dates swap worked out well for you! I’m happy the recipe was a hit :)
Do you by chance have the macro information for this on hand?? If not, I’ll try to figure it out. In the oven now and smells amazing!
Hey Megan, I’m sorry, I don’t! You may be able to figure it out using an online tool like nutritiondata.com or an app like MyFitnessPal? Good luck!
Is it possible to make this ahead and stick in fridge and then put in oven right before youre ready to serve?
Hi Molly, I didn’t find it reheated well to be honest – I found the sauce absorbed into the cake and it didn’t have as much chocolate sauce after.
So, I tried this recipe, but I think accidentally using a 1/3-cup measuring cup instead of 1/4 resulted in some proportional errors (and a rather extended cooking time).
However, that being said, is there any reason–since I am not vegan–that this wouldn’t work with an actual egg, whole milk and plain old flour?
This is definitely a recipe I would like to include on our holiday menu. Thanks for providing helpful tips.
Just Made this and it was super delicious! Even though I used a mix of buckwheat and rice flour instead of oat flour and used white sugar instead, it still was a success! I am totally making this again for my birthday in a week!
I’m so pleased to hear those swaps worked out well for you, Camilla. Happy early birthday!
Hello, this cake looks amazing but I can not find pumpkin purée , is chestnut purée or sweet potato purée an option to use instead of the pumpkin one? I’m still looking for some pumpkin one though…
Thanks a lot.
As an alternative to pumpkin puree, I think a homemade butternut squash puree might work best in terms of texture. I hope this helps, and would love to hear how it goes if you try that out!
Oh my goodness what an awesome idea I love how simple this is, granted lots of ingredients but just shove it all in and magic happens, this is going on the to-do-list!
By the way, everyone likes cake, but i like something more. I have eaten a lot of cakes but it look very good and tasty. Today is my fast ,i’ll definitely try this tomorrow
Thank you
This looks amazing and I’m totally going to try it. I’m following the Forks Over Knives plan (all plants, non sugar, no oil), and I wonder if I can sweeten this with dates?
Thanks!
Hey Beth,
Oh good question! I have only ever made it this way so I’m not sure…but I think your best bet would be swapping the coconut sugar with date sugar (usually swapping dry sweetener for dry sweetener works fine). I’d love to hear how it goes!
We tried this recipe yesterday for Christmas Eve dinner. I was so pleasantly surprised, that it came out good and my adult kids actually liked it and ate a whole serving of it. We have just started eating the Plant Based No Oil way of eating for health reasons and for 2 months we’ve struggled to find foods we actually like. This was only the 2nd recipe we’ve tried that we liked. [g]. And my adult kids are not eating this way, so it’s important for us to find recipes we all will eat.
We started checking it at 25m and it seemed too liquid-y. Kept it in 5m at a time up to 40m. We think we should have taken it out sooner, because it was more cake like and not a lot of gooey pudding. So we’ll try to take it out sooner next time.
We also tried your Peanut Better Balls recipe, because my husband’s favorite every year has always been Peanut Butter Squares, but there’s a LOT of butter and confectioner’s sugar in my recipe, so I was looking for a healthy substitute. Success! He actually liked them! We didn’t make balls though. We pressed the peanut butter mix into a glass loaf pan and doubled the amount of chocolate and poured it over the top, refrigerated it for 20m and then cut them into squares, which is what we used to do w the old recipe. They were great, but we overdid it with the dark chocolate, because the layer was thick and hard on the teeth. But maybe 1 and a half times the chocolate the next time, will be just right.
Now I’ll be searching your website today, looking for a NO OIL waffle mix. Looking forward to trying more No Oil recipes from your site. Thanks very much!
Hi Liz, I’m so happy to hear that you’ve been making so many recipes over the holidays! Thanks so much for letting me know how they went. I hope your New Year is off to a great start!
This looks amazing. I want to make it for thanksgiving but with such a hectic kitchen, I am unsure how easily i will be able to prep a dessert with everyone around. Is there a way I can make the batter ahead of time and just bake right before dessert?
My daughter went vegan a year ago and being French myself, I was not amused. However, she’s home from college so tonight I made an effort and made your crispy smashed potatoes, festive chickpea tart, and the gooey chocolate pudding cake for dessert. Everyone loved the meal, even my teenage son, who usually grumbles that we shouldn’t have to eat vegan because of his sister’s food choices, and my mom, who says a life without cheese is not worth living. Thank you for broadening my cooking horizons!