Welcome to the miLam Curated Exhibits, Exhibit № V: A Commonwealth of Chocolate Cakes

Dark Chocolate Olive Oil Cake. Photo Credit: Make It Like a Man/Mary Piontek

Chocolate cakes can be flavored with cocoa, chocolate, or both. These are blended with an astonishing array of others ingredients, from butter, oil, or sour cream to mashed potatoes, zucchini, or beer, resulting in a spectrum of chocolaty cakiness. On one end, you might find a chocolate cake that is light, milky, and mild. On the other end, one that is “…so dense,” according to the Marquis de Sade, “that it is black, like the devil’s ass is blackened by smoke.”

Speaking of pain and pleasure, why is it always “death by chocolate?” It doesn’t sound like a good way to die. Are you stoned with large blocks of chocolate? Drowned in melted chocolate? I’d rather have “life by chocolate” and eventually be killed by warmed, heavy cream. Although I do have to say, “death by vanilla” sounds boring.

Buttermilk Banana Cake with Coffee-Chocolate Frosting. Photo Credit: Sifting Focus

And whose idea was it to associate the word “decadence” with chocolate? Was that person familiar with the term? It refers to a decline or regression from a formerly excellent or vital state: decay. I’d like to think that a chef who was also a clever wordsmith had some cake that was well past its prime, and thought it’d be funny to describe it as “decadent.” But in fact, I believe that when you are served something called “chocolate decadence,” you are the one who is being described as overripe, or washed up … as though, if you were a better person, you would’ve ordered the strawberry cheesecake. Quite commonly, however, “decadence” is used to describe excessive pleasure – pleasure a person of higher moral standards wouldn’t have – and by that, of course, I mean sex. Dirty, sinful sex. “Chocolate decadence,” therefore, easily could be a sideways and subtle reference to an orgy of such epic proportions that it would embrace food fetishes. The restaurant serves the chocolate to you with a fork, of course, in order to avoid appearing untoward. Throw the fork to the ground and slam your face directly into the chocolate while screaming yes, yes, yes, and you’ll almost surely find an invitation to the party tucked inside your bill.

And yet, as connected as chocolate is to death and decadence, it is also connected to love. Love! Oddly, you never see large, heart-shaped boxes of Valentine’s chocolates labeled “Death … by Chocolate!” with a note inside that says, “To My Dearest Degenerate Slut…” Even more perplexingly, no one brings chocolate to funerals, even though it’d be such a convenient way to express your “love” for the “dead” person who is now quite literally in a state of “decay.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss.
Please accept this chocolate cake
as a token of remembrance.”
I like the sound of that.
Photo Credit: Melty Foods

Photo Credit: Sally Cooks

Photo Credit: Cake Crumbs

Photo Credit: Good Housekeeping

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A Commonwealth of Chocolate Cakes

We’ve tested some of the recipes for the cakes in the photographs.
To read the test results, and to see other related articles, click here.

Photo credits: Pop Sugar, Melty Food, Sally Cooks, Cake Crumbs, Good Housekeeping. For more information, hover over photos. Click photos for an instant informational reward. Green text is special: hover, click. The miLam Curated Exhibits is proudly sponsored by Save some chocolate cake for the Children, the American Red velvet Cross, the National Rifling through my cupboards to find some chocolate chips Association, and viewers like you.