Liquid Barn Lava Cake v2

Setup: Asmodus C4 RDA, 0.45 ohm Alien clapton coil, 45 watt power

Testing: LB Lava Cake (discontinued version) 6% & LB Lava Cake (new formula) 6% diluted with 80/20 3mg UnJuice by /u/kindground (Essential Depot VG/PG + CNT PG-based 100mg/ml freebase nicotine from Liquid Barn (LB). Steeped 5 days.

Background: The original LB Lava Cake has been discontinued and replaced with a new formulation. Inquiring minds want to know, what's the difference?

Notes: There are some variances in opinion or perception regarding what LB Lava Cake used to taste like, as you can see in these reviews by: mlNikon, ConcreteRiver, and Tamachicken.

FWIW, I never really got a full cake out of the old one, it pretty much tastes like hot fudge sundae topping with just the barest touch of something that might be cake. So, the stuff that comes oozing out of a Lava Cake, with barely any of the cake itself clinging to it. The hot fudge sundae topping-type flavor had just a very slight Tootsie Roll-ish quality that fortunately could easily get lost in a mix, but even as a single flavor Lava Cake was actually really good under the circumstances. The circumstances being that it’s a chocolate flavor, so it could have easily been so much worse. No gross band-aid flavor or anything like that.

The new version is very different, you can even look at it and see how different it is. It tastes more like light, fluffy chocolate cake, not especially heavy or rich, more like a chocolate Angel Food Cake than a Devil's Food Cake. Not as chocolatey as a real chocolate cake either, like an under-chocolated chocolate angel food cake. So all of the previous recipes that rely on LB Lava Cake are DEAD. There’s no way this works as a substitute, it’s way too different. Just absolutely dead. Pour one out for my homies.

In terms of off-notes, still not bad whatsoever for a chocolatey flavor. I thought it seemed maybe a little perfumey on the first hit or two, but after that, no. Just under-chocolated fluffy chocolate cake that’s also a little undercooked. It has a little bit of a raw flour taste to it, like cake batter has, and the tiniest bit of a raw cocoa flavor as well. Enough of both that if you found the right chocolate to add it to make it chocolately enough, you could easily make a chocolate cake batter vape out of it without any of the cake batter flavors.

Throat hit: None.

Usage suggestions: If you want to vape a chocolate cake using this, I would recommend something to make it richer, like a butter flavor or a touch of heavy custard/vanilla ice cream if you can get that to blend in. And more chocolate, obviously, and best of luck with that. And then probably another cake (JF Yellow Cake or one of the WF cakes, for example) or other bakery flavor (CAP Sugar Cookie?) to keep from burying the bakery and to cover up the some of the undercooked aspect. At that point, you're basically building a chocolate cake yourself from the ground up anyway, so I'm not convinced LB Lava Cake is necessary, though it might help quite a bit to get all those disparate ingredients to cooperate with each other.

And then if you want to vape a Lava Cake, you'll need something entirely different for the lovely goo in the center unless you've still got some of the old Lava Cake on hand and don't care about future mixers being able to mix and enjoy your recipe.

Disclaimer: 5 days is a really short steep on a bakery and this might change over time (if I had to guess, I wouldn't bet on it changing much, but it might get more cakey, bakery flavors like to come out with some steep, and less raw). I was encouraged to post this half-assed review/comparison because there's some interest in what LB has done to Lava Cake, and I happened to have a bottle of each mixed at the same time at the same concentration anyway for FOTW: Chocolate Cake.

edit: a word