Gâteau Thérèse

A homestyle French chocolate cake that's a family favorite

One thing nice about living in France is that when people invite you to dinner, everybody appreciates a home-cooked meal, whether it’s spectacular or not. You have to be pretty close to someone in Paris to be invited to their apartment for dinner.

One could chalk it up to the perceived stand-offishness of Parisians, but I found out (before I got a dryer, myself) that because so few people in Paris have clothes dryers, they hang their clothes around their apartment. And you don’t want people coming over who you don’t know, seeing your bras and undies hanging up to dry. Actually, I don’t think even people close to us want to know whether we wear boxers or briefs…or our cup size. (Although, I suppose if boxers and briefs listed the “cup” size, they might take more interest in that information.)

When you are invited, there isn’t a lot of hand-wringing over things like fallen tart sides or burnt spots on quiche. Those details don’t tend to be issues as they are elsewhere, and no one in France has ever asked me how to, say…keep tart or pie dough from getting soggy. If you spent a few hours buried under a warm pile of fruit, you’d probably have a hard time staying dry too.

Another common concern (as if we don’t have enough to worry about in our current world…!) is cakes sinking in the center. Like my stomach, which is moving in the opposite direction that I’d like these days, nature happens, and some cakes naturally sigh a little in the middle after they’re baked.

I can’t speak for other bakers, but you could probably add more flour or less liquid. But speaking for myself, I have a chocolate cake in my repertoire of recipes that sinks a bit in the middle. I worked on it for a loooong time, and in the end, I realized that it tastes best the way it is. So why try to “fix” something that’s not broken, just different?