10 Vintage Chocolate Desserts That Deserve Another Chance

The presence of a chocolate dessert on the table always means that people present at the occasion are in for a good time. Something about the rich, deep color and the collective consciousness that understands the flavor it holds infuses even the simplest chocolate dessert with the potential for supreme goodness. And when those desserts that are perfect for chocolate lovers happen to be old-fashioned creations handed down by family cooks for generations? The prospects for achieving dessert nirvana become undeniable.

Sometimes, even heritage recipes get lost in the shuffle of new and novel chocolate inventions. Every so often, we should take a few steps back and appreciate the retro chocolate desserts that our forebears used to haul out whenever a big to-do was in order. They made cobblers and pies and silky pudding-like treats that never should have gone out of vogue. The introduction of boxed mixes and premade cakes trimmed the list to the usual selections we enjoy today, but these oldies-but-goodies are still worth rediscovering.

Let's crack open the vintage chocolate dessert cookbook and pull out a few treasured creations that wouldn't be out of place among your sweet selections today. Along with the exquisite taste of chocolate in its period forms, these dishes also cook up a sweet sense of history and heritage that's always fun to sample from time to time.

If you've only ever thought of cobbler as fruit based dessert, you're in for a mind expanding treat when you give chocolate cobbler a try. This clever Southern creation is a combination of chocolate cake and chocolate pudding all made in the same dish at the very same time. The process causes the batter elements within the ingredients to rise and bake solid while the pudding elements remain below, simmering to the perfect thickness. The result is a two-for-one treat that dazzles when served piping hot out of the oven with a dollop of cream on top.

Cobblers originated with settlers in early America who improvised a hot fruit dish with suet-based biscuits on top. Back then, it wasn't a designated dessert but a staple that could be eaten for any meal. Tinkering by clever bakers brought about the chocolate version, the origins of which are hard to pin down. One recipe prepared in a YouTube video by The Hillbilly Kitchen shows off what is purported to be a 100-year-old recipe.

When it circled back around in the culinary community, chocolate cobbler had evolved into chocolate lava cake, a more contained version that kept the mix of sponge and molten chocolate intact. With its chewier biscuit-like top and generous pudding bubbling underneath, the original is due for a sweet resurgence.

Depending on your sense of whimsy, Mississippi mud pie either conjures up visions of sludge from the bottom of a river or a decadent collection of gooey chocolate layers stacked in a crunchy cookie crust. For dessert fans with a sense of nostalgia for late 20th century specialties, it's the latter, a recipe that adorned parties and special occasions. When home cooks in the South were looking for something beyond the usual cake selections, they made this crafty invention their tasty centerpiece. Soon, the creation caught on and became a staple of restaurant dessert menus, for those of us old enough to remember. It still shows up from time to time, in the form of ice cream and spiked milkshake shots.

It's easy to see how the Mississippi mudpie got its name; gooey chocolate filling piled into the crust creates the impression of a pipe pan filled with deep, dark mud. Modern twists like Reese Witherspoon's favorite mud pie trifle have given the original creation new life. It's a good sign that contemporary cooks can find room in their recipe books for a retro chocolatey treat that won't disappoint. Just be ready to be walloped with more chocolatey flavor than you've tasted in a long time.

The name of this old style dessert makes it sound like a cake made from chocolate potatoes. In reality, the recipe utilizes chocolate for flavor and incorporates mashed potato flakes to give the sponge an extra-light texture. The starch in the potatoes provides a perfect partner for earthy-sweet chocolate to play with, even if it seems to be an unlikely combination.

You can trace the roots (pun intended) of the chocolate potato cake to early 20th century Ireland, when chocolate became an available ingredient in working class kitchens. Experimentation led to a winning blend that evolved into a cake that brought the best qualities of both items into balance.

Older recipes use actual potatoes, which could be a fun way to recreate some old-fashioned kitchen techniques. While it may sound strange to add potatoes to baked goods, potato flakes are rumored to be an ingredient in Krispy Kreme doughnuts — a well-known secret embedded in the untold truth of Krispy Kreme's secret recipe. So resurrecting a historical chocolate potato cake as a possibility for your modern dessert collection may not be as out of left field as you think. 

It might be challenging to find a more indulgent chocolate dessert than one called simply chocolate delight. With layers of cream cheese, ganache, pudding, and whipped cream all nestled into a pan and served chilled, this could be one of the richest handcrafted inventions ever committed to a recipe card. How could you not want to recreate it just to see what it was really like?

This is another sweet treat that originated in the South, taking on various names throughout the years, depending on the region where it appeared. A few of the other monikers chocolate delight has gone by include Cocoa Silk pie, Mama Mountain Mudslide, and Next Best Thing to Robert Redford. That last one alone tells you how long these blissful creamy layers have been bouncing around. You may have even heard it called S*x in a Pan; it's all the same multi-layered mash-up of chocolate and other wonderful things.

It's high time handy bakers give this unique trifle-in-a-pan (or in a trifle dish, for that matter)another go, especially with store-bought ingredients like chocolate syrup and Cool Whip available to stand in for the homemade elements. Take the recipe for a test spin before springing it on your friends and family.

There's something fiendishly simple about a black magic cake, considering the end result is a darker-than-dark chocolate sponge that truly captures the essence of bittersweet pleasure. Hershey introduced this recipe as a beginner level project that tasted like a gourmet masterpiece.

Hershey began promoting the original recipe on the backs of its cocoa tins more than 100 years ago. It was an easy and fresh cake to toss together at the last minute, and it delivered the enchanting flavor that the name hints at. The secret ingredients in this enticing formula? Buttermilk and brewed coffee, two handy add-ins that turn up the rich chocolate notes. Add your favorite frosting in mocha, chocolate, or peanut butter flavors and you have a true classic on your hands.

With box cake mixes available at bargain prices in a seemingly unending variety of flavors, black magic cake moved to the back burner in favor of poke cakes and lava cakes once the 1970s had passed. Anyone who longs for a return homespun sweetness can find the recipe on the Hershey website. Those of us who've tasted it and added it to our regular dessert lineup think it's one of the best dessert chocolate dessert you'll ever taste.

It's not a cake that causes depression; nor is it a cake that cures depression. It's a cake that originated during the Great Depression as a workaround for ingredients that were difficult to come by. The recipe used no eggs or dairy ingredients, instead relying on vinegar to infuse the sponge with airy lightness. The finished product was a smart and tasty way for folks to enjoy dessert even when times were as tight as they'd ever been.

This ingenious use of chemistry to simplify traditional cake recipes showed how industrious bakers could be when faced with a challenge. Once the average American could afford eggs, butter, and milk again, the straightforward cake composition came back into style. But boomers with long memories are likely to recall their parents and grandparents whipping up a Depression cake — which was also called a wacky cake — just to show off their chops in the kitchen. Thanks to that dedication to heritage and perseverance, recipes for chocolate Depression cake provided a handy treat when the COVID-19 pandemic made a full suite of baking ingredients difficult to access.

Not only is necessity the mother of invention; it also can be the inspiration for reinventing chocolate cake and turning it into a unique offering that can satisfy a 21st century sweet tooth. Imagine your dessert tray decorated with a Depression-era dessert made without eggs or butter that can still captivate chocolate lovers as much as it did back then.

Sometimes the simplest solution for your chocolate dessert cravings are also the most satisfying, a description that more than adequately defines classic chocolate peanut clusters. This homemade version is as easy as dumping Spanish peanuts into melted chocolate, scooping them out onto a piece of wax paper, and refrigerating them until the chocolate sets.

There's a reason candy bar companies use a combination of peanuts and chocolate in their trademark creations. The blend of flavors and textures is one of the most classic mixes of all time, featured as candy store confections dating back to the early 20th century. Chocolate peanut clusters became a standard in box chocolate collections and expanded into deluxe versions like turtles and Goo Goo Clusters, where caramel and pecans joined in on the fun. The recipe became shared in newspapers in the 1940s as a Christmas creation, relegating it to a special season.

But there doesn't have to be a holiday to get this simple creation into your life. The fact that peanuts and chocolate are so readily available in every grocery store in the U.S. makes including this homey old-style chocolate dessert in your confectionery plans a no-brainer. You can even use a slow cooker to make a massive batch to include among your holiday treat hand-outs.

Chocolate velvet cream sounds like a chic dessert you would order in a trendy restaurant, where you receive a serving in a thimble — just enough to whet your appetite for something sweet but not nearly enough to justify the outrageous price. Luckily, it's actually a homemade creation from the early part of the 20th century that you can make in any quantity you choose.

This panna cotta-like goodie debuted as a lush mousse-like delight sometime in the 1930's. It was an advancement of the original velvet cream, a custardy creation that appears in an 1881 cookbook as a blend of cream, eggs, and gelatin. It doesn't sound too tempting without flavoring, a design flaw that later cooks eventually tried to resolve. One version of the chocolate velvet cream dessert shows up in a different cookbook in 1938 and was recreated in a YouTube video by Glen and Friends Cooking. This iteration works melted chocolate into the mix, turning the concoction into a blend of flan and mousse. The finished liquid is poured into serving-sized molds and chilled until set.

The process is similar to both custard and mousse, which means if you've mastered those two inventions, you can just as easily work chocolate velvet cream into your routine. It isn't the fanciest throwback chocolate dessert you'll ever try, but it's a fun way to bring a forgotten classic into the fold.

The luxurious flavor and consistency of a Sacher torte came about unexpectedly, when an Austrian kitchen apprentice named Franz Sacher stood in for his head chef and ended up creating a timeless chocolate dessert for visiting dignitary. The cake became a European favorite in bakeries and restaurants, but through the decades it was pushed to the back of the pastry case in favor of more maximalist inventions. That's a shame, since the simplicity is what provides this vintage chocolate dessert its undying elegance.

What makes a vintage Sacher torte so much more special than a regular chocolate cake? The denseness of the sponge and the richness of the frosting combine to create a highly luxurious texture that delivers sophisticated flavor missing in ordinary chocolate cake recipes. It may be why you see Sacher tortes as featured creations in high-end bakeries, a nod to its explosive origins. The difference between a torte and a cake is simple: a torte is a flourless cake that's multi-layered and holds a filling. For a Sacher torte, this filling is apricot jam; a glossy ganache topping is added when the cake is reassembled.

If you have some experience with baking and you're drawn to the idea of a homemade cake that comes with a touch of delicious heritage, you can easily recreate this torte for yourself. You just need a workable recipe and a little patience to achieve one-of-a-kind vintage chocolate creation that will impress even the most finicky chocolate fan.

It just so happens that the French silk pie isn't actually French; it's an all-American creation. Though it still makes appearances in pie collections at restaurants and bakeries as a nostalgic addition to the contemporary choices, its ability to represent the best of chocolate pie making makes it a necessary inclusion if you're looking for vintage chocolate desserts to resurrect.

When French silk pie began making the rounds in 1951, it was all thanks to a baker named Betty Cooper. She came up with the recipe for an ice box pie that slowed the process down to make sure the filling was as rich and silky as possible. The finished pie was topped with as much fresh whipped cream as could fit on the surface, making mounds of fluffy white magic to crown the mousse-like filling. Rumor has it that Cooper dreamed up this pie for a Pillsbury baking contest; whether this is true or simply part of the legend is unknown, but it makes a sweet detail for the story.

Easier chocolate pies using Jell-O pudding became popular in the '70s and '80s, pushing homemade chocolate pies into the background. Now that home bakers have once again embraced the idea of luxury creations, a classic French silk pie is just the thing to add retro style to your next dessert-ready occasion.