mai hobby: 9 out of 10 People Love Chocolate. The Tenth Person Always Lies- Chocolate Lava Cake

There are over 319 million people that live in the USA.
Half of that population, over 159 million Americans, consume over 50% of the worlds chocolate.

Isn't that crazy?!

I don't know anyone that doesn't like chocolate except ......me.

Weird? Yup. Believe it or not, I was never ever a chocolate fan.

As an elementary student, did you ever wait in the lunch line, hoping to be handed a carton of chocolate milk instead of regular milk?

I don't know about your elementary school, but I remember at my school, working the milk line was one of the best jobs during cafeteria duty. Before anyone could pass through the lunch line, I hid all the chocolate milk cartons to the side, and saved them for my favorite people. I was in charge of passing out the milk, so I was able to save them and hand out my precious stash to all my favorite people (i.e. my friends, my friends' crushes, my elementary crush, my favorite teachers, etc.) when they passed by. It was the most powerful thing for a little elementary school kid.

I never understood why everyone loved chocolate milk.

Growing up, whenever my mom took my brother and I to the grocery store, we always ended up fighting about which ice cream flavor to get. My mom would only buy one carton of ice cream so my brother and I usually spent the entire time in the ice cream aisle arguing with each other. My brother was usually the chocolate advocate, while I defended vanilla relentlessly. Our stubborn-ness and unwillingness to compromise usually led to my mom buying us a totally random flavor, like artificially flavored cherry popsicles.

I never understood why my brother loved chocolate ice cream.

Well...now that I am 30 years old, I think I am beginning to understand the hype around chocolate.

It's like brussel sprouts or taking bathes.

You start hating it as a kid, and then when you finally reach adulthood, you slowly begin to realize that brussel sprouts aren't so bad after all or taking bathes is actually a relaxing wonderful thing.

My fiance recently made these amazing chocolate lava cakes. He got the recipe from The New York Times. It only requires a few simple ingredients- butter, chocolate, eggs, sugar, and flour.

He whipped it up in less than 30 min and it was amazing. He served the warm gooey cake with Talenti tahitian vanilla gelato (my favorite!).

Try it sometime. If a chocolate novice, like myself, enjoyed it... then you would probably LOVE it because let's face it... unless you had childhood experiences like me, you are most likely in that group of Americans that consume over 50% of the worlds chocolate.

-mai