I’m down at my parents’ house for a few days, and due to “excessive heat” and also fascism I have been forbidden from using their oven to make a souffle, even though I have never made a souffle before and I would really like to and I don’t have an electric mixer in my own home so it’s impossible for me to make a souffle there, DAD. So I made them a chocolate custard instead, as punishment and also a form of psychological resistance. It was an amazing custard.

How do you find recipes? Here is my secret: I type the most important three ingredients I have into Google and see what comes up first. This is a method that almost never fails me. (Here is the recipe for chocolate custard I used last night, it is tremendous and I recommend you try it.)

Afterwards, while idly clicking through Related Links (DAMN RELATED LINKS, I ALWAYS CLICK THEM), I found a recipe for chocolate cobbler. Chocolate cobbler! Who ever heard of such a thing?

Now I understand that, if we’re sticking to tradition, this is not, in fact, a cobbler in the true sense of the word, as it contains no fruit filling or shortbread crust. But it’s also not really quite like a cake or brownies. The way it’s baked — a thick layer of brown sugar and cocoa over a chocolate batter, topped with very hot water — means it bakes up to form a crispy, biscuit-like topping that swaddles a running, molten chocolate-y sea. I’d say that’s cobbler enough for me!

This recipe has quite a retro vibe, but in the best way possible. Imagine a partially baked brownie (therefore the perfect brownie). It uses really basic ingredients, nothing fancy, but provides complete comfort in a bowl. I actually realized after the fact that my Chocolate Cobbler is in fact kin to Emma’s Warm Fudgy Pudding Cake, a similar layered cake-brownie-cobbler hybrid with Midwestern roots.

This woman — this perfect woman — has just described the consistency that every baked good, regardless of flavor, ought to have at all times. I want molten, half-formed almond croissants that crisp on the outside and ooze marzipan on the inside. I want cinnamon cookies that release spicy filling like lava. All baked goods should adhere to the Cobbler Principle, now and forever; all cakes should have the inner consistency of lava.

Please share with me the best and molten-iest recipes that you have, because I plan on dirtying the hell out of my parents’ kitchen before I leave.