Move over chocolate muffin, there’s a new viral Olympic dessert, and it’s very ’90s

If you’ve been following the Winter Olympic Games on social media, you might have spotted an avalanche – hot, chocolatey and erupting from the centre of a pudding in the Olympic Village dining hall.

From the first day of competition, Canadian athletes have been posting about a dessert, known in Italy as tortino al cioccolato con cuore fondente. Elsewhere, it’s known as chocolate lava cake or fondant – a small, dome-shaped treat with a warm, molten centre. Already, it’s being hailed as the “new chocolate muffin”, the breakout star of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

“This year’s chocolate muffin is the lava cake,” says Canadian speed skater Ivanie Blondin, awarding it a perfect 10 out of 10 in an Instagram video.

Courtney Sarault, another Canadian speed skater, agrees. “Perhaps better than the viral chocolate muffin,” she says, her TikTok video showing her spoon hovering over the dessert, before diving in to reveal the soft centre.

After several days of searching, Canadian professional ice hockey player Natalie Spooner finally tracked down the dessert. “This is what I’ve been waiting for,” she said on TikTok. “It’s gooey, it’s chocolatey. This is hitting the spot right now, so I’m going to give this a 9.1 out of 10.”

It’s been decades since we’ve seen this level of frenzy for a lava cake.

Back in the late ’90s, the dessert was a fixture on Australian menus, usually served warm under a snowstorm of icing sugar with vanilla ice-cream and strawberries on the side. Its origins, however, are a point of culinary debate.

French chef Michel Bras is often credited as the creator for his 1981 coulant au chocolat, which used a frozen ganache core to ensure a liquid centre. But the version most of us know was a happy accident. In 1987, chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten famously pulled a batch of chocolate cakes from the oven too early. He served the “raw” results anyway and received a standing ovation from 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 gorgeous melting, chocolatey pudding was a huge thing in the late 1990s,” she says. “Every chef had a version of it, called moelleux, courant, molten, lava cake, you name it.”

At three-hatted restaurant Marque in Surry Hills, Sydney, it appeared on the menu as chocolate fondant. Chef Mark Best admits to jumping on the trend.

“When Essential Cuisine by Michel Bras came out, everyone got onto that [recipe] as a new source code,” he said.

“People like the dessert because they thought it was clever, it delivered an ooh-ah moment as diners would cut into it and get that liquid molten centre.”

Home cooks followed, guided by recipes from Dupleix and Donna Hay, attempting to replicate the dessert’s oozy magic at home.

Nagi Maehashi, of RecipeTin Eats, uses Bras’ method, which involves placing a frozen sphere of ganache inside the batter. “That way, the lava inside is real chocolate, not just cake batter,” she says. “Yes, it requires an extra step, making the ganache and waiting for it to set, but it’s worth it.”

Dupleix’s recipe, on the other hand, follows Vongerichten’s approach, which uses cake batter for the centre, and relies on timing to get the texture just right.

“Chocolate doesn’t always need more chocolate, believe it or not,” she says.

“As a cook, it teaches you courage – you have to pull it out even though you know it isn’t cooked through – and the power of precise timing,” she says.

Like poached pears and panna cotta with raspberry coulis, the thrill of the molten centre gradually faded. Served too often, and with too little care, the lava cake melted into a lukewarm puddle of familiarity. Its final resting place: the Domino’s pizza menu, where it’s remained for the last 16 years.

Yet here it is again, resurfacing on social media feeds across the globe and praised by the world’s elite athletes just days before Valentine’s Day.

Is it finally time to start making them again?

“Absolutely,” says Dupleix. “There is a whole generation out there who don’t know about it, and who should.

“It is an enduring classic that is perfect for cooking at home. It’s easy to throw together, looks wonderfully impressive on the plate, and makes everyone happy.”