Petit Gâteau
 | |
| Type | Dessert |
|---|---|
| Serving temperature | Hot and frozen |
| Main ingredients | Chocolate cake or crêpes |
 Cookbook: Petit Gâteau  Media: Petit Gâteau | |
Petit Gâteau (in French, small cake; plural: Petits Gâteaux) is a dessert composed of a small chocolate cake with crunchy rind and mellow filling that is served hot with vanilla ice cream on a plate. In French, the exact term for this pastry is : "Gâteau fondant au chocolat". Don't mistake "Fondant" and "Moelleux", which is a chocolate cake with a runny chocolate heart.
The dessert has been popularized in New York City restaurants since the 1990s. Nowadays, variations of the cake/ice cream flavors have come to include fruits and even alcoholic beverages, such as whisky.
This dessert has also been known to be made using crêpes, in which case it is multiple crepes stacked on one another separated by some kind of filling such as warm jam or berries.
Although its name in English comes from French, this confectionery is actually called moelleux au chocolat ("chocolate chewy") or fondant au chocolat ("chocolate melty") in French.