Yes, prunes belong in chocolate cake

Why do some foods seem to become trendy overnight, embraced by big box retailers and wellness influencers alike? You go most of your life having no strong feelings one way or the other about kale, then you suddenly can’t go out to a restaurant without seeing a massaged salad on the menu.

You watch with whiplash as avocados go from a normal piece of produce, to famous enough to get their own emoji, to a disparaging shorthand for all that’s supposedly wrong with an entire generation. Meanwhile, other delicious, versatile and nutritionally powerful foods languish in the culinary basement of perpetual uncoolness.

Prunes are old people food. They’re boring. They’re nature’s laxative. In other words, yuck.

Prunes, however, deserve so much more.

Over the past few years, in an attempt at an image makeover, prunes have sometimes been renamed “dried plums.” But the notion of a granny sipping on prune juice to keep her regular holds fast in the collective imagination.

That’s why I was recently surprised to read an article on CNBC in which registered dietitian nutritionist Lauren Manaker revealed that her “most underrated” energy-boosting food was the humble prune. Yes, prunes are high in fiber. (Calm down — so are kale, cauliflower and and avocados.) They contain iron, potassium and vitamins C and K. And, as Manaker notes, they’re also “a good source of energy in the form of natural sugars.”

When I need convincing about a particular food, I usually find that throwing a little chocolate in the mix helps make the case. I was in London earlier this month, where a spectacular dessert at Ottolenghi reminded me of just that. While Ottolenghi’s prune-infused sticky chocolate loaf takes its cues from the classic British sticky toffee pudding, my own chocolate prune cake, inspired by a simple Food.com recipe, is a more pared-down affair.

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Cake recipes with dried fruit usually involve soaking it in boiling water or alcohol. To further deepen the chocolate flavor here, I instead put my prunes in hot coffee, which helps bolster the chocolate essence of the cake. (If you’re not a coffee person, substitute water, tea or rum.) I’ve also doubled the amount of cocoa and added dark chocolate chips — so rest assured, this is a decisively chocolatel-y dessert.

I know prunes are a tough sell. Despite never eating a prune in his life, my spouse refused to touch a slice of this decadent dessert. He was quite spooked by the dried fruit’s geriatric reputation. My daughter and I, however, gleefully pounced on the cake, without a moment’s regard for the fact that there might actually be something vaguely healthy in it.

But I swear this recipe is amazing. A one-bowl dessert that takes minutes to prepare, it’s rich, moist and deeply complex. It’s the chocolate cake for when you want something more than regular old chocolate cake, which makes it the most persuasive case I can think of to convince you that prunes, of all things, are pretty cool.

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Inspired by Food.com and Ottolenghi

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