Lava Cake Challenge

When I was 19 I threw a party at my house and someone brought a HUGE thing of lemon cream cookies. No one ate any, and I thought that I'd be stuck with them the rest of the year. To my surprise in the morning they were GONE, thanks to the incredible eating abilities of my random roommate, Bethany.

After years of living with Bethany I have seen more incredible feats: eating 7 cream-filled Krispy Kremes in one sitting (and only stopping at 7 because she felt sick mentally, not physically), eating all of our friend's cookies while she took a Sunday nap, 13 snickers in one day, etc, etc, etc, etc.

Fast forward a few years when I saw pictures of chocolate lava cakes and thought I'd try and make them. I did and they are INTENSE and I would eat half of one and feel ill. Matt however claimed he could eat all six that the recipe made. I wanted to call his bluff. Hence, the lava cake challenge began.

So one day I made the six lava cakes, invited a lot of ward members over, and documented Matt's attempt. and, to our disgust/amazement, he did it. (editor's note: you cannot understand what a feat that is until you've had one. or until you've checked out the nutritional information and seen that one cake has over 600 calories and 47 grams of fat).

I then realized that Matt and Bethany could both eat a disgusting amount of junk food. During our 2.5 weeks together in China, I often discussed how we needed to have some sort of a sweets eating battle between the two of them.

Last Sunday Matt was in town (along with some other law school friends) and during our Canadian Thanksgiving dinner we discussed all this. It was decided that the time had come for Bethany to do the lava cake challenge. We baked and prepped--showing video footage of Matt's experience while the cakes were cooking. Everyone made bets as to how many she could finish, the winner getting the extra cakes. I bet that Bethany would finish them all--meaning that if I won I would get no cakes, but I would have been a supportive friend...

Anyway, Bethany was amazing. But after 5 cakes she remembered her tapeworm was gone (she had one before and think it helped her in all of those impressive junk food feats) and she thought she might throw up. We girls decided Bethany wins as she is half Matt's size and she ate 5 cakes and a bite of the 6th, and Matt only ate 6. Matt disagreed and said they needed to have a cookie eating contest to be sure. I figured he only was saying that because he wanted some cookies, so declined to sponsor it. But maybe next time...

The recipe: http://www.bhg.com/recipe/chocolate/lava-cakes/