While many things say, “I love you,” few things do it quite like baking someone a chocolate cake. Here, an array of expressions for your most heartfelt emotions.

Basic Chocolate Cake
: Boyloso
1/18
One of the best darned chocolate cakes we've ever experienced. (Seriously. Would we tease about something as dramatically life-altering as this?!)
Recipe
Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt Cake
: France Ruffenach
2/18
Does the true beauty of this cake lie in its stunning silhouette? Its intensely chocolatey chocolatiness? Or its lazy-day ease? You tell us.
Recipe
Paleo Chocolate Cake
: Jenni Hulet
3/18
This paleo chocolate cake also happens to be gluten-free and, even more importantly, it tastes magnificent enough to rival any other chocolate cake, birthday or otherwise. Go ahead. Taste it and see.
Recipe
German Chocolate Cake
: Carl Tremblay
4/18
Dark chocolate cake stacked high and smothered with gooey caramel and coconut and pecans? Don't mind if we do.
Recipe
Vegan Chocolate Cake
: Kate Whitaker
5/18
Yup. Vegan chocolate cake. If you tasted it without knowing, all you'd experience is chocolate through and through. No one will ever know it's vegan...unless you tell them.
Recipe
Red Wine Chocolate Cake
: Laura Edwards
6/18
We're sorta surprised you're still reading this rather than clicking on the title given how compelling the ingredients in the title are...
Recipe
Hershey's Chocolate Cake Redux
: David Leite
7/18
Certain things in this world inspire lasting love. Like this cake. An old-fashioned American classic for a reason.
Recipe
Chocolate Bundt Cake
: Cenk Sonmezsoy
8/18
An homage to the chocolate cakes of yesteryear but with a contemporary dark chocolate oomph that turns tradition upside-down in the most pleasing possible way. You're welcome.
Recipe
Chocolate Mug Cake
: America’s Test Kitchen
9/18
Molten, gooey, dense, chocolatey, and done in minutes with nary any evidence, er, we mean cleanup, this microwave mug cake is the solution to when you need dessert stat.
Recipe
Chocolate Zucchini Cake
: Hannah Queen
10/18
Reason number #456 to love summer? This luxuriously decadent yet relatively marginally healthful chocolate zucchini cake. Seriously.
Recipe
Flourless Chocolate Chile Cake
: Holly Wulff Petersen
11/18
A subtle heat coupled with the richness of chocolate make this a failproof way to woo friends and family. Gluten-free, too, though no one will notice anything's missing.
Recipe
Red Eye Devil’s Food Cake
: Marcus Nilsson
12/18
A classic chocolate cake on caffeine, this impressive yet easy to assemble stack of chocolatey elegance takes its rounded chocolatey-ness from a cup of joe and its ample fudgy-ness fro ganache.
Recipe
Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes
: Carl Tremblay
13/18
Vegan chocolate cupcakes. So scrumilicious and deep dark chocolatey no one's even going to notice they're vegan. Swear.
Recipe
Chocolate Mocha Cake with Irish Whiskey
: istetiana
14/18
Mmmm. Mocha chocolate cake slathered with an Irish whiskey-spiked chocolate glaze. A decadent, grown-up cake good for whatever ails you.
Recipe
Molten Chocolate Cakes
: Taylor Kiser
15/18
Sometimes called a volcano cake, this much ballyhooed molten dessert is, quite literally, bursting--er, oozing--with chocolate.
Recipe
Blackout Cake from Ebinger's
: Ann Stratton
16/18
Just like the much-ballyhooed chocolate blackout cake from Ebinger's in Brooklyn, this one has the same pudding-like filling, the same tender chocolate crumb, and the same rich, rich, rich frosting.
Recipe
Flourless Chocolate Cloud Cake
: Alan Richardson
17/18
This lofty cake is so crammed full of chocolate and butter and air, there's no room for flour--although we made sure to leave space for ample swoops of softly whipped cream.
Recipe
Homemade Hostess Cupcakes
: Jennifer
18/18
Unequivocally better than those preservative-laden cake imposters you grew up on. Swear. And you can customize whatever you want to write on top, whether the name of your team or a sweet little something.
Recipe
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