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Grab a spoon and dig into this Blueberry Pudding Cake – a luscious, warm blueberry sauce is hidden under a perfectly sweet lemon-almond cake.
This past week, our local supermarket had a ‘buy one, get one free’ deal on fresh local blueberries, so we stocked up. Blueberries are so expensive other times of the year, so when the prices come down during the summer months, we eat fresh, local blueberries as often as we can!
For a while now, I’ve been wanting to try making this Blueberry Pudding Cake recipe – and I’m so glad I finally did! The recipe came from the same Tougas Family Farm Cookbook where we found our delicious Apple Crisp recipe so many years ago. (It’s available online here, and it’s a great collection of recipes made from all different types of fresh fruit picked on their Massachusetts farm.)
How do you make Blueberry Pudding Cake?
This Blueberry Pudding Cake is similar to our Hot Fudge Pudding Cake recipe in that, after you mix up the lemony blueberry batter, you sprinkle a dry sugar mixture on the batter – then pour hot water over the top before it bakes. (I know…it seems like a strange step!) As it bakes, the hot water sinks to the bottom, while the batter rises to the top – creating a luscious, hot, syrupy blueberry sauce underneath and a sugar-crusted cake on top!
There are actually lots of similar Blueberry Pudding Cake recipes online. But this particular version of the dessert is so good because the lemony cake batter is flavored with almond extract – which is a wonderfully complementary flavor to the sweetness of the blueberries. (Big kudos to Dorothy Corcoran and Kitty Patterson who are listed as the recipe creators in the cookbook.)
You’ll want to serve this Blueberry Pudding Cake right out of the oven so that the blueberry sauce is still hot and steamy – and the next time we make this, we’re thinking it would also be great served with some vanilla ice cream or whipped cream (although it’s fantastic on its own). Overtime – if you have any leftovers – the cake will absorb the blueberry sauce, but even then, this Blueberry Pudding Cake is still delicious!
You may enjoy these other blueberry dessert recipes:
- Blueberry Buckle
- The Real Jordan Marsh Blueberry Muffin Recipe
- Blueberry Peach Cobbler
- Ginger Peach Blueberry Ice Cream
- Lemon Blueberry Cream Pie
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Blueberry Pudding Cake
Grab a spoon and dig into this Blueberry Pudding Cake – a luscious, warm blueberry sauce is hidden under a perfectly sweet lemon-almond cake.
Ingredients
1 tablespoon butter to grease an 8×8-inch pan
1 pint fresh ripe blueberries
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon lemon zest
Juice from half a lemon
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup whole milk
3 tablespoons melted butter
1 teaspoon almond extract
1/3 cup more granulated sugar
1 tablespoon corn starch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup boiling water
Instructions
Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Liberally butter an 8×8-inch pan and set aside.
In a bowl, toss blueberries with cinnamon, zest and juice. Pour into prepared pan.
In a medium bowl, whisk flour, ¾ cup sugar and baking powder.
Whisk in milk and melted butter along with almond extract. Pour this evenly over the blueberries.
In a small bowl mix 1/3 cup of sugar with corn starch and salt and sprinkle this over the batter.
Pour the cup of boiling water into the pan (right over the batter) and place in the preheated oven and bake for 35-40 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted into the batter comes out clean, but there is still blueberry sauce at the bottom. (The original recipe had a baking time of 55 to 60 minutes, but our cake was ready after 40 minutes.)
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Notes
- Fresh cultivated blueberries are best for this. Try not to get the wild smaller berries.
- Although we used fresh blueberries in this recipe, frozen blueberries will work too.
- As this Blueberry Pudding Cake bakes, it rises right to the top edge of an 8×8-inch pan, and once out of the oven, it deflates to about half.
I’m curious why you recommend not using wild blueberries. In my experience they are more flavorful than the cultivated.
Hi Pat – The smaller wild berries won’t yield as much juice for the sauce.
Made it. Love it, especially the wisp of lemon! The only negative for me was the center didn’t brown; it was done, but not brown. My only change was vanilla instead of almond extract, and I used frozen blueberries. Would definitely make again.
Not sure why that happened Brenda…did you happen to use a different sized pan? (Maybe it wasn’t fully cooked in the middle, or enough to start browning.) Just a guess?
Can I use a large cast iron skillet?
We’ve never tried this recipe in cast iron. The baking time might be different but in general it could work.
This sounds delicious! Lemons vary in size and juiciness. Would you guess you’re using 2 tablespoons juice or 3 tablespoons?
Thank you –
Hi Beverly – I’d go with 1-2 tablespoons for half a lemon.
This tasted good, but the blueberry part was runny. I may try it again with blueberry pie filling and see if that helps.
Hi Lisa – Did you happen to leave out the corn starch? That would be the thickener for the sauce. If you use blueberry filling, that already has thickeners and sweeteners so you’ll want to make some other adjustments to the recipe.
After I remade this recipe, but subbed vanilla for the almond extract and just a bit of pie spice instead of the cinnamon on the blueberries, we loved it! Everything thing else exactly the same, but I’m just not an almond extract fan.
Glad you were able to adjust the recipe to suit your personal tastes Laura.
I’m only giving 3 stars because I’m going to give it another go with a couple of changes. We didn’t care for the almond extract flavor so I’m going to sub vanilla, and there was too much cinnamon on the blueberries. Loved the texture and the basic flavors so it’s definitely worth another try!
Thanks for your feedback Laura.
I had bought some fresh blueberries but didn’t eat them quickly enough, so they were kind of past their prime. I didn’t want to throw them out just because they were going soft, which is why I came to this recipe. I didn’t have milk on hand so I substituted with coconut milk and it worked great. I found the suggested 40 minutes to bake was way too short for me – when I checked it at that time, I still had a puddle of water and completely raw batter in the middle. I poked some holes in the center to help the water drain to the bottom, and ended up baking for closer to 65 minutes. Around 50 minutes in I covered the outer edges with foil to prevent them from burning while the center finished. I also found the “sauce” on the bottom was extremely runny when I was done, it didn’t thicken at all. I think in the future I might mix some flour or cornstarch with the blueberries to help the sauce thicken more. Despite these things, it was delicious!
Thanks Rachel. FYI – Some of your baking time/runny sauce issues may be related to the coconut milk swap – it has more fat content than regular milk so that is probably why it needed the extra time to bake and seemed runny.
Would you be able to use canned blueberry pie filling?
Hi Brittany – The pie filling has a lot more liquid and thickeners so I suspect you’d have to make other adjustments to the recipe. We’ve only made it as written so without testing, I can’t really give you any guidance on that swap.
Could I make this recipe in a bundt pan?
Hi Monique – No – This is more of a spoonable cake with sauce so you wouldn’t be able to turn it out of the bundt pan to slice – if that is what you are hoping to do. Also a bundt pan is designed to cook the center of the cake as well as the edges – I think it would bake too quickly and you wouldn’t have any of the sauce. I’d suggest a baking pan or dish.