Sometimes the only thing that will do for dessert is a total chocolate extravaganza and that’s exactly when you need our Death by Chocolate Poke Cake. We’re talking chocolate cake, chocolate pudding, chocolate fudge, chocolate whipped topping, and chopped chocolate bars to finish it all off. It’s enough chocolate to satisfy the most fervent chocoholic and for those who maybe aren’t quite as cocoa-obsessed, there’s enough variation in chocolate intensity and textures that it won’t overwhelm. But it will surely impress.

If you haven’t yet had the pleasure, a poke cake is an easy 9×13 cake where you literally poke holes all throughout the cake so the filling has the chance to seep down into every nook and cranny. In this case, that’s a chocolate cake, and it’s dark chocolate pudding that fills all those holes.

Then, of course, there’s hot fudge. It’s heated up with some sweetened condensed milk to make it a bit more pourable and that gets poured over the cake too. Some gets down into the holes with the pudding, but it also settles on top of the cake as a nice fudgy layer. Whipped topping is a classic for poke cakes and in this case, it’s mixed with more dark chocolate pudding just to keep the theme going.

A little bit of chilling time and some chopped chocolate on the top and it’s time to indulge. And it is indeed indulgent. It’s chocolate-chocolate-chocolate all the way through so ‘Death by Chocolate’ feels like a pretty appropriate name. And while it probably won’t kill you, the flavor here feels worth the risk. (And we all have to go somehow, right?)