Sin in a Box

If you are one of the lucky few blessed with a Trader Joe's located within fifty miles of your home, I suggest you get a box of these from the freezer section:

I tried doing a cutie post of how-to pictures, but they didn't do this glorious little cake any justice, and when I tried dressing it up with a little whipped cream, it turned out that the container was empty and it spurted droplets of cream all over my cake instead of nice little clusters about the edge as I wanted.

This is truly the best thing I never baked. Packed two per box, the cakes are maybe three inches in diameter, possibly four. Remove the plastic wrap, loosen the cake from it's cup and upend it on a plate. Leaving the cup over the cake, zap it in the microwave for 45 seconds.

When you remove the cup, it doesn't look all that interesting, really, just a little hockey-puck cake on a plate. In fact, the cake itself reminds me a bit of the texture of a Drake's Devil Dog. When you hit it with a fork, though, this wonderful warm chocolately "lava" oozes forth, rendering the fork wielder incapable of coherent speech.

That is, until the fork wielder looks at the side of the box and spouts expletives at the calorie content, which is something like 360 calories per hockey puck. The Oracle is notorious with this. Why look at the lack-of-nutrition label if you're eating something that's known to be unhealthy and fattening? Just the name, "Chocolate Lava Cake" should give you a good indication that this is not a lo-cal dessert.

But, for all its sin, the cakes do not contain any artificial flavors, hydrogenated oils, or chemical preservatives. When you read the ingredients, it's all stuff you can recognize and pronounce.