Cottage pudding is a traditional American dessert consisting of a plain, dense cake served with a sweet glaze or custard. The glaze is generally cornstarch based and flavored with sugar, vanilla, chocolate, butterscotch, or one of a variety of fruit flavors such as lemon or strawberry.

One typical recipe is from Recipes Tried and True, a collection of recipes compiled in 1894 by the Ladies' Aid Society of the First Presbyterian Church in Marion, Ohio.^[1]

Cottage pudding can be baked over a fruit base, with a recipe from Fannie Farmer resulting in a dessert similar to a fruit cobbler, as in the recipe for Apple Pan Dowdy in The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.^[2]

Cottage pudding is a simple single layer butter cake served with some kind of sauce poured over it.^[3] The sauce could be custard, hard sauce, butterscotch, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, or crushed fruits.

There are many variations on the simple recipe. The traditional preparation is served as a one layer cake topped with fruit or custard, but the same batter can also be used for layer cakes, like banana layer cakes, which are filled with a layer of custard and sliced bananas, or as a substitute for sponge cake in traditional layer cake "pies" like the Washington pie or Boston cream pie, and other desserts like peach melba and baked Alaska.^[4] It could also be used to make ice cream sandwiches.^[5]

• List of desserts