The Vintage Depression-Era Dessert That Paved The Way For Today's Lava Cakes

Many a strange recipe was born out of necessity in the 1930s when ingredients became increasingly scarce for would-be home bakers and cooks. The temptation at the time was to lean into ingredients that were still available and to adapt and create recipes that were more forgiving if you didn't have a particular ingredient, like fresh milk or eggs. You will likely be relieved that many of those Depression-era dessert recipes have very happily gone by the wayside, like prune pudding, potato candy, and tomato soup cake. But, chocolate cobbler is one particular vintage treat that has stood the test of time and feels like an early version of what would become an uber popular 1990s dessert: lava cake.

Chocolate cobbler relies completely on ingredients that can be found in the pantry, including flour, sugar, cocoa, oil and salt. Even the fresh milk can be substituted with powdered or evaporated milk in a pinch. Though this rich treat calls for a scant number of ingredients, it still feels satisfying thanks to the chocolate, in a way that other Depression-era desperation or make-do pies that substitute the star ingredient like mock apple pie and water pie (think pecan pie without pecans) don't.

The magic of chocolate cobbler comes down not as much to the ingredients, which you can fudge a bit with either light or dark brown sugar and the aforementioned milks (or even subbing oat or nut milk), but the order in which you add them to the prepared pan. A bottom layer of flour, sugar, cocoa, oil, milk, and salt becomes the batter that goes in first. After a generous dusting of sugar and cocoa powder, the heavy lifting is done by none other than hot water — talk about an ingredient that is easy to source in the leanest of times. The heated water is poured over the top just before baking (it is critical not to mix it in) and forms the bubbly chocolate goodness that emerges from crunchy bits of crust after 45 minutes in the oven.

The "molten" bits of chocolate cobbler are reminiscent of Jean-Georges Vongerichten's much more up-market Chocolate Valrhona Cake, which the famed French chef almost single-handedly made ubiquitous on restaurant menus across the country in the '90s. Though the origination of this iteration of the dessert is a bit murky, it is clear that cutting into a chocolatey cake and watching a lava-like gush of liquid chocolate struck a chord with the American public that still hits today. And to think, the most humble of chocolate desserts in the toughest of times captured a bit of that delight.