Mystery Behind Perfect Chocolate Lava Cake Revealed

If you've perused the dessert menu after an American-Italian meal, or found yourself exploring the gourmet bakery for a new dessert, you may have stumbled across the Chocolate Lava Cake.

This innocent-looking dome is a decadent treat that can easily take care of a chocolate craving on any given day. Ordering this at a restaurant often leads to some degree of a chocolate coma, a rich and moist cake filled with warm chocolate fudge that oozes out of the center upon that first bite. If it's served with ice cream and raspberry sauce, you're just a few steps from heaven.

Restaurants around the world pride themselves on the perfect chocolate lava cake, and it's often found on menus in a variation of its official title - 'Chocolate Explosion', 'Chocolate Bomb', and 'Molten Chocolate Cake' - are just a few creative descriptions for this treat. Still, the basic recipe stays the same, and if you find yourself desperate for this dessert and there's no restaurant in sight, there is hope - you can make the perfect chocolate lava cake in your very own kitchen.

The chocolate lava cake is actually quite simple in construction, and only requires some assembly before baking. Before you attempt to inject your cake with chocolate, be forewarned that the process of filling those domes is much easier than it looks. Here's the mystery revealed:

Chocolate Lava Cake Secret: The Domes
Use a regular chocolate cake mix. You may gasp with astonishment about this simple strategy, but it really will give you the rich and moist cake you need for the structure of the cake. The best choice? Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate cake mix, an oh-so-simple guilty pleasure.

Chocolate Lava Cake Secret: The Filling
Some recipes call for chocolate pudding, hot fudge sauce, or even melted chocolate embedded in the middle, but none of these will give you that rich and oozing texture found at the restaurants. The real secret? Condensed milk mixed with melted unsweetened chocolate chips and a few caramels. Just mix together ¼ cup unsweetened chocolate chips, 3-5 caramels, and 1 can of condensed milk in a double boiler to make a smooth sauce.