Maybe you are tired of spending three hours on a pie. Maybe you said yes to bringing dessert and then remembered you are bringing a side dish too. Maybe you want something warm and chocolatey on the table without giving up the afternoon for it.

Make this dessert instead. It takes five minutes to put together, but nobody eating warm chocolate cake with ice cream will think you took the easy way out. There is no bowl and no mixer. Everything goes straight into the dish it bakes in.

A wooden spoon scoops gooey, chocolate chip brownies from a white baking dish, reminiscent of a classic Chocolate Dump Cake Recipe. The brownies are rich, fudgy, and melted chocolate is visible throughout.

Read This First

The Pudding To Buy

The standard instant pudding box is 3.4 ounces. This recipe needs the family size box at 5.9 ounces. Use the whole thing.

Cook and serve pudding is the other box to avoid. It sits on the same shelf at close to the same size. Cook and serve pudding only thickens on the stovetop. There is no stovetop step in this recipe. Check the front of the box for the word instant before it goes in your cart.

The Cake Mix To Buy

Pick the cake mix for how strong you want the chocolate. Devil’s food bakes up darker and much stronger. It can also taste overly sweet. Plain chocolate cake mix is the milder of the two.

During my initial rounds of testing, I used devil’s food and didn’t like the taste. Replacing it with a “plain” chocolate cake mix was a much better choice.

When buying the cake mix, choose a cake mix that does not already contain pudding. Some brands add it to the mix, so check the package before buying.

Yes, You Need to Stir This Dump Cake

Most dump cakes are layered and left unstirred. That works with a cherry dump cake or a peach dump cake because the cake mix sits directly on wet pie filling. This chocolate dump cake does not have fruit filling underneath, so the milk must be stirred through the cake and pudding mixes.

Use a rubber spatula to scrape across the bottom and into the corners of the baking dish. Keep turning the mixture over until you no longer see pockets of dry powder. The batter does not need to be completely smooth.

Partially eaten Chocolate Dump Cake in a white baking dish, topped with melted chocolate chips and rich chocolate frosting, showing a gooey and moist texture.

Test #1 – Using a whisk, the batter collected inside the wires, while dry cake mix remained stuck to the bottom of the dish.

A partially eaten chocolate brownie in a glass baking dish, topped with melted chocolate chips and resembling a decadent Chocolate Dump Cake Recipe, shows off its gooey, rich interior. A spoon rests in the upper right corner.

Test #2 – Using a spatula to mix the layers, the cake was moist and fudgy all the way through.

When To Take It Out Of The Oven

When the baking time is up, the top of the chocolate dump cake should look baked, but the pudding in the center will still look soft. The middle may move slightly when you lift the pan from the oven. That does not mean the cake needs more time. The hot pudding will continue to thicken as the cake rests.

It is easy to look at the soft center and add another five or ten minutes. By the time the middle looks completely firm, the cake has baked too long. The chocolate pudding begins to dry out, and the cake topping becomes hard and crumbly.

Chocolate lava cake inspired by the classic Chocolate Dump Cake recipe, with melted chocolate and a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, served on a white plate with a spoon.

Serve it warm with no churn vanilla ice cream. For fruit in it, my chocolate cherry dump cake uses the same one dish method. You will find more of both in my dessert recipes.

Pan Size Matters:

You’ll want to use a 9″x13″ pan so that the texture and consistency are right. I’ve used an 11″x7″ pan before, and it turned out a little too thick, which changed the delicious texture of the dump cake.

Recipe Test Notes – Last Updated August 2026

This recipe was first published in May 2021. My independent recipe tester, Angela, tested a previous version of this chocolate dump cake in May 2026. The recipe told her to whisk the mixture slightly and not to stir it entirely. She scooped a serving and found dry cake mix across the bottom of the dish, plus pudding powder through most of the pan.

I rewrote that step. The new instruction had her stir all the way to the bottom of the dish and into the corners. Nothing dry is left anywhere before the chocolate chips go on top.

She retested in July 2026. She scooped from the same spot that had failed. The card below is the version that passed.

Her notes: “The cake did come out gooey with pudding-like layers. There were some small parts that resembled a regular cake, but they were not dense or dry. It was still very moist.”