Chocolate Pudding Cake

My girlfriends and I had a virtual dinner this past weekend. It's so nice to share meals together despite being far away. We had cream of tomato soup, 'wedding' salad, grilled cheese, and pudding cake. All were delicious, but this particular post will focus on dessert.

I'm a big cake lover, but unless I've set aside the time to do it, I hate spending time making frosting and then frosting the actual cake. Although it's fun to spend time decorating, I just think its a lot of work for not that much taste reward, and I'm all about taste rewards. That's why I love this chocolate pudding cake. When it comes out of the oven, it's ready to be eaten! No frosting or other work necessary to perk up this cake. Plus, I really think this cake is magical: before going into the oven, you pour chocolate chips, brown sugar + cocoa powder, and boiling water on top of the cake batter, and after it bakes, the pudding is on the bottom. Magic!

Whisk together all the dry ingredients.

Add in the dry and whisk until smooth. The batter is almost a frosting-like consistency.

Pour the batter into a 9-inch pan.

Layer on the chocolate chips and then the brown sugar + cocoa powder mix.

Unlike this picture indicates, the next best move would be to put the cake on the oven rack and then pour in the boiling water just before you close the oven door. Otherwise, you're going to have to carefully carry a very full pan topped with boiling water to your oven, which is not a fun task.

After baking, magic! Cake on the top!

Once you cut into the cake, though, you discover the delicious warm chocolate pudding hiding. It's definitely not the prettiest cake ever, but I promise you that it's tasty.

Recipe can be found on cookingfriend: right here.