Winter Olympics 2026 viral dessert: The chocolate lava cake
Gooey chocolate cake with a melted center was once everywhere, now it’s taking over the Olympic village. Make your own using the RecipeTin Eats method or the ‘raw’ method.
If you’ve been following the Winter Olympic Games on social media, you may have seen a warm, chocolate-colored avalanche emerging from the middle of a pudding in the Olympic Village cafeteria.
Since the first day of competition, Canadian athletes have been sharing about a dessert known in Italy as tortino al cioccolato con cuore fondente. Elsewhere it is known as chocolate lava cake or fondant; It’s a small, dome-shaped treat with a warm, molten center. It is already being called the “new chocolate cake,” the breakout star of the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“This year’s chocolate muffin is lava cake,” says Canadian speed skater Ivanie Blondin, awarding it a perfect 10 out of 10. an Instagram video.
Another Canadian speed skater, Courtney Sarault, agrees. “Maybe it’s better than the viral chocolate cake,” he says. his TikTok video He runs his spoon over the dessert before diving in to reveal the soft center.
After several days of searching, Canadian professional ice hockey player Natalie Spooner finally found her dessert. “This is what I’ve been waiting for” He said on TikTok. “This is gooey, chocolatey. This is a hit right now, so I’ll give this a 9.1 out of 10.”
It’s been decades since we’ve seen this level of insanity in a lava cake.
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In the late ’90s, dessert was a fixture on Australian menus; It was usually served warm under a powdered sugar snowstorm, with vanilla ice cream and strawberries on the side. But its origins are a point of culinary debate.
French chef Michel Bras is credited with the creator of the 1981 chocolate chip chocolate bar, which uses frozen ganache beans to provide a liquid center. But the version most of us know was a happy accident. It became famous in 1987 when chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten took a batch of chocolate cakes out of the oven too early. Still, he served up the “raw” results and received a standing ovation in the dining room.
Australian food writer Jill Dupleix first encountered the famous molten cake at Vongerichten’s New York restaurant Jean-Georges in 1997.
“This amazing melty chocolate pudding was a huge deal in the late 1990s,” he says. “Every chef had a version of it—moelleux, courant, molten, lava cake, you name it.”
It was featured as chocolate fondant on the menu of Marque, the three-hat restaurant in Sydney’s Surry Hills. Chef Mark Best admits he’s keeping up with the trend.
“When Michel Bras’ book Essential Cuisine came out, everyone understood [recipe] “as a new source code,” he said.
“People loved the dessert because they thought it was clever, providing an ooh-ah moment as diners cut into the dessert and scooped out its liquid molten center.”
Home cooks have been trying to replicate the dessert’s oozy magic at home, guided by recipes from Dupleix and Donna Hay.
Nagi Maehashi of RecipeTin Eats uses the Bras method, which involves placing a frozen glob of ganache into the dough. “This way, the lava inside becomes real chocolate, not just cake batter,” he says. “Yes, it takes an extra step to prepare the ganache and wait for it to set, but it is worth it.”
Dupleix’s recipe, on the other hand, follows Vongerichten’s approach, using cake batter for the center and relying on timing to get the texture just right.
“Believe it or not, chocolate doesn’t always need more chocolate,” he says.
“As a cook, it teaches you courage—even when you know it’s not quite done, you have to bring it out—and it teaches you the power of precise timing,” he says.
Like the panna cotta with poached pears and raspberry sauce, the excitement of the molten center gradually faded. Served too often and with too little care, lava cake collapsed into a lukewarm puddle of familiarity. Final resting place: Domino’s pizza menu, unchanged for 16 years.
And yet, just days before Valentine’s Day, it’s resurfacing on social media news around the world and being praised by the world’s elite athletes.
Is it finally time to start making them again?
“Absolutely,” says Dupleix. “There is a generation out there that doesn’t know this and needs to know.
“An enduring classic that’s perfect for home cooking. It’s easy to put together, looks incredibly impressive on the plate, and makes everyone happy.”
Erina Starkey- Erina is the Good Food App Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Previously, Erina held various editing roles at Delicious.com.au and writing roles at Broadsheet and Concrete Playground.
