Best Recipes 2023: Allrecipes asked our readers and a panel of judges to help us find the best recipe in five different categories: bacon, chicken, potatoes, cheese, and chocolate. See the full list of winners here, and read more about the best chocolate recipe below.
Mirror mirror on the wall, which chocolate recipe is the best of them all? While there’s no wicked witch to contend with for Allrecipes’ Best Recipes 2023 contest, the stakes felt equally high when it came to our chocolate category. To find the winning recipe, our editors chose 10 chocolate recipes that were both trendy and beloved by our readers. In June, our readers voted on their favorite chocolate recipe, and then the top two recipes went to a cook-off in our Birmingham test kitchen where our judges—Carrie Boyd, Elizabeth Heiskell, and Dakari Akorede—selected the champion. No poison apples here!
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Meet the Two Contenders
- Rich Chocolate Truffle Pie: This truffle pie recipe is from MARBALET, and it was first published on March 31, 1999. It has 361 reviews, and a 4.6-star rating. It was also the cover star (!) for our Thanksgiving issue last year in 2022. Our test kitchen pro, Tricia Stuedeman, describes this as a decadent recipe that’s perfect for entertaining. Steudeman also notes that even though she used a homemade crumb crust for her pie, you could easily use store-bought.
- One Bowl Chocolate Cake: This cake by shirleyo was first published on February 25, 1999. It has over 3,500 reviews with a 4.7-star rating, and it’s one of our most popular chocolate recipes of the past year. The genius of this recipe comes from just how easy it is to make—stir a bunch of things in a bowl, put it into a couple of cake pans, and bake. You can choose any frosting recipe you like to accompany, but our test kitchen pro, Nicole Hopper, used this recipe.
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What the Judges Had to Say
- Rich Chocolate Truffle Pie: After one single bite, Heiskell told the test kitchen it wasn’t necessary for her to try the cake. “I mean, am I wrong?” Heiskell turned to Boyd, who nodded and said simply “it’s good.” Heiskell didn’t think that was an enthusiastic enough response. Akorede couldn’t get over how the pie “didn’t feel heavy,” and thought it was “absolutely phenomenal.”
- One Bowl Chocolate Cake: Akorede said the cake “wasn’t my favorite” and that “it was a little bit bitter.” Heiskell has nothing negative to say about the recipe, noting that it was a “lovely rich and moist cake.”
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And the Winner Is…
The judges didn’t need a long time to deliberate. “There’s a very clear winner,” Boyd says, “It has to be the Rich Chocolate Truffle Pie.” Heiskell agreed: “This is a delicious cake, don’t get me wrong—but that pie! It’s the chocolate crunchy crust, the creamy-velvety center, and the whipped cream. It’s phenomenal.” Akorede just said he needed to get his hands on this recipe.