Whenever my family has a birthday or holiday get-together, we always have two types of dessert. One is almost always inevitably chocolate cake and two is a variety of fruit tarts for the non-cake eaters. Why? Well, aside from the fact that we all love and adore food (and no the fruit tarts are not there as the healthier option), we have two different palettes to satisfy. It's hard to believe that in France for example (the land where my father comes from), it's actually rare to have "birthday" type cakes for dessert (i.e. any type of spongy cake with frosting). Instead fruit tarts and fruit pies/cakes (with no frosting) are the big thing so we've always had the addition of fruit tarts.

But since we have to please both the French and American taste buds, we threw in a big ol' chocolate cake so there's no hard feelings.

Now, I just made myself hungry for chocolate cake and fruit tart...