Winter Olympians at the Milan Cortina 2026 Games are chasing a familiar kind of gold: the viral Olympic village dessert.
After Paris 2024's chocolate muffin became a social-media legend thanks to Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen (aka the Muffin Man), athletes this year are filming taste tests in search of its successor.
Many are finding chocolate look-alikes in the form of more muffins and soufflés. But it's looking like a gooey, chocolate lava cake-style Italian dessert called tortino al cioccolato is emerging as the treat to beat.
Better than the viral chocolate muffin
Canadian Speed Skater Courtney Sarault dug into the chocolate lava cake in a clip shared on Feb. 3, 2026. In the post’s caption, the athlete claimed, "Perhaps better than the viral chocolate muffin.. (yes I know it isn’t a muffin)."
“Don’t get your hopes up—it’s not the lava cake!”
Canadian Hockey player Natalie Spooner mistook a chocolate soufflé for the storied lava cake in a TikTok clip from Feb. 4, 2026. Before she could taste it, teammate Emma Maltais shouted across the dining hall to warn her not to get her hopes up.
"That’s not the chocolate lava cake… that’s the chocolate soufflé," she said. Maltais scrunched her nose and compared the soufflé to a "glamourized gluten-free brownie."
"This feels like the texture of a hockey puck," said Spooner. "This is not what I was looking for."
In a TikTok clip from Feb. 4, 2026, Canadian alpine skier Cassidy Gray examined a small chocolate muffin.
"Is this the chocolate muffin that everybody's speaking about?” she asked. “It's pretty little, but it also kind of looks like a brand muffin. But I'm trying it cause everybody asked about it, but I don't know if this is what they're talking about.”
After tasting, Gray wrote in the post’s caption, “I fear this is not the one that all the hype is about.”
American luger Summer Britcher tried the same chocolate treat in another clip from Feb. 4, 2026. She ate it in a single bite before declaring the muffin a two-biter. “It’s gooey on the inside,” she said.
At this point, the hunt may be more entertaining than the muffin ever was.
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