To be paid for food writing, you’re required to sign a contract riddled with non-negotiables. Some are obvious—caring about Ina Garten, treating ramp season like Christ’s resurrection—while others are more discreet (using the phrase “having a moment” weekly). While I appease nearly all of these obligations (I need money), there’s one I will not succumb to: pretending chocolate lava cake isn’t an enjoyable meal-ending bite.
Woah. Lava cake positivity. We haven’t seen that sort of edge since Bourdain chastised sliders. If the self-importance embedded within my lava endorsement provokes your inner monologue into ridicule and sarcasm—same. But here’s the problem: I’m legally bound to construct this type of artificial controversy. Over the last few years, the big wigs at the recipe factories installed a Hot Take Addendum (HTA) into their writers’ contracts—a contingency clause that allows us to break non-negotiables so long as we treat our dissenting opinions with a geopolitical seriousness.
As you’ve rightly noticed, these articles of resistance all sound the same. There’s a reason for this: Within the HTA, lie numerous, company-approved, templates for headlines and copy. Many of these will be familiar to you, as common characteristics include: declaring that “it’s okay” to have an unpopular opinion, telling someone why they “should” be eating something, and attaching existential dread to commonly consumed groceries (like I did with canned cold brew).
But back to lava cake: I love it. So much so that today I’m honoring that love by employing my favorite HTA templates to flesh out the history and appeal of this classic Valentine’s day dessert. See below.
It’s Okay To Love Lava Cake
After addressing lava cake’s fall from grace among culinary elites (a point which will be made by regaling the scene from Chef where Jon Favreau defends his molten bona fides to a smug Oliver Platt), I’ll address the reasons you can enjoy this obviously delicious dessert by order of importance.
Reason 1: Molten chocolate cake is vanilla ice cream’s preferred companion. The hot and cold play in tandem. So do chocolate and vanilla. Also, they promote coffee drinking. Which, in turn, promotes amaro sipping. What else do you need from a meal’s final act?
Reason 2: Lava cake’s technical roots run deep. Despite staggering success as the official dessert for Restaurants With Buzzers, the origins of warm chocolate cake with a liquid center trace back to legendary chefs Michelle Bras and Jean-Georges Vongeritchten. Although the chefs’ approaches to developing a cake with a molten core differed (Bras poured batter around a frozen cylinder of ganache so that, while the cake baked, the ganache melted into “lava,” while Vongerichten’s method for developing a runny center was simply undercooking the cake) the two are largely credited with honing the dessert’s foundational recipes.
Why You Should Place A Singular Mint Leaf Placed In A Random Corner Of Every Lava Cake Plate
Like this, this, and this. Also, if you really want that lava to pop, it’s best to drizzle chocolate sauce and/or caramel syrup up, down, and across the plate (ideally creating a pattern reminiscent of a heart monitor displaying signs of life) and underneath the cake. Kind of like this. As for why anybody should do either of these things—ever—we’re waiting for Chili’s to put out a statement.
We Tried The Lava Cake At Every Chain Restaurant. Here’s What We Found.
Pain, mostly. Also, some very important data (Fact: Chili’s sells more than 10,000 of these cakes a day. That’s more than 3 million a year. Sick!). Altogether, amounting to a ranking of the best commercially-perfected structures of molten chocolate (5. Domino’s; 4. Bennigan’s; 3. California Pizza Kitchen; 2. Applebee’s; 1. Chili’s) that will confirm already established truths.
Never Grow Up: Why We’re Making These 3 Lava Cakes On Valentine’s Day.
This one I’d write. Happily. Mainly because this Eric Kim recipe rocks. So does this one from Grant Melton. And, of course, this instant-pot version from Melissa Clark also tastes really, really good.
Is there another niche food topic you'd like me to unpack next? Let me know in the comments below.
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