Gateau au Chocolat Fondant

The Celebration: Molly's Birthday
The Challenge: Gateau au Chocolat Fondant de Nathalie
The Tunes: Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

T'was a friend's birthday this weekend and this particular friend is especially fond of celebrating birthdays.  Perhaps when she gets a few more under her belt, she might change her tune.  But for now, she's young so who can fault her for celebrating?
Her request: a birthday cake for the office.  Cakes are typically not my thing.  In fact, I don't think I've ever made a cake that didn't come out of a box and even that was probably only once or twice.  Never really been much of a dessert guy.  Challenge accepted!

The birthday girl was telling me about a Fleetwood Mac tribute album and how good it was earlier in the day.  I don't happen to have this album, however, I do have Rumours, one of the top selling albums of all time. So I thought I would toss that on the ol' turntable.  Start to finish its a great album with virtually the entire line-up making regular appearances on Classic Rock radio stations.  Always a good listen.

As for the cake, I turned to my dessert consultant en Paris and she recommended Gateau au Chocolat Fondant de Nathalie, which is a recipe from Trish Deseine's Je Veux du Chocolat! as mentioned in this blog.

Mountain of Chocolate and Butter

Only a few ingredients so it can't be that hard, can it?

Ingredients:
1 Cup Butter
200g Dark chocolate
1 Cup Sugar
4 Eggs
1 Tbls Flour

Using a double boiler, melt together the chocolate and butter.  Once everything is melted and properly mixed, remove from the heat, add the sugar and let it cool for a while.  Add the eggs one by one making sure that they are properly incorporated into the mixture.  Finally mix in the flour.

Pour the mixture into a non-stick 9" pan (or grease up a pan) and cook in the oven at 350°F for approximately 30 minutes.  After 30 minutes the cake should be set.  Turn the oven off and let it sit in the oven for an additional 10 minutes.  Let it cool on the counter and then refrigerate.
As recommended, the cake is best made the day before and refrigerated.

To offset the heavy chocolate (and to add some nice colours), I topped with strawberries.

I believe it was well received at the office.  At least everyone was polite enough to finish it.
Hope you had a great birthday Molly!