When I was interning at Pierre Herme Patisserie here in Paris, I did everything wrong. I cut the butter wrong. I put the cookie dough on the cookie sheet wrong. I squeezed the lemons wrong. I scraped the dried cookie crumbs off the parchment paper wrong. Basically I breathed wrong there so when the subject of dessert comes up, I naturally start twitching like Pavlov's dog. When I find a few good dessert recipes that I can actually make without incinerating the kitchen, I stick with them. Over and over and over. No one has complained yet so I just keep baking... This is one tried and true recipe that I adapted from Fast Food My Way, the PBS Jacques Pepin cook book. He serves it with an apricot-cognac sauce but a few weeks ago my clients requested no cognac. Plain apricot sauce sounded too sweet so instead I used a strawberry puree. The strawberries at the market that morning were some of the best I've tasted since I arrived in France, so I bought a crate and went crazy.
Gateau de Chocolat avec Puree des Fraises
a very fancy way to say chocolate cake with strawberry puree!
8 oz (225 grams) bittersweet chocolate, broken into small squares
8 tbsp butter (1 stick or approx 100 grams), cut into cubes
2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp cornstarch
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
2 baskets strawberries
sugar as needed