Petit gâteau
A petit gâteau, is a dessert composed of a small chocolate cake with crunchy rind and mellow filling that is conventionally served hot with vanilla ice cream on a plate. In French language usage the terms for this variety of chocolate cake, which in French-speaking cultures is typically served without ice cream, are "gâteau fondant au chocolat" or simply "chocolat fondant", as "petit gâteau" is simply a generic phrase referring to many types of small cakes.
The dessert has been popularized in New York City restaurants since the 1990s. Nowadays, variations of the cake and 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 consists of multiple crêpes stacked on one another separated by some kind of filling such as warm jam or berries.