Au Bon Vieux Temps, Ali-Baba and Belle Hélène

Ran down to Au Bon Vieux Temps on Sunday, and not by the shortest way, just because I wanted to keep running rather than wait for lights to change. Got there a little bit after 10 am, which is a little late, since they open at 9 am. Their Marjolaine was down to the last piece, and that's their best cake, though I was there for new cake, not that. I'm actually two behind on them because of cake-off wins, so I decided that if they had two new cakes (and that don't seem to vary the line-up much), then I would get them, which I was able to do.

I went with two other semi-traditional cakes. One was Ali-Baba, which was closer to the original version that became the Baba in that it had custard inside rather than whipped cream, though it was still rum, which was a later change. It was good, but traditional isn't always best. Note sure whether whipped cream would have been better than custard, but that would be my choice for this type of cake, now that I've tried a custard version.

Sorry for being negative, but the other traditional cake was Belle Hélène. Of course, making this level of fruit replicas is really a new thing, a result of the ease of making silicon molds and access to refrigeration, but the desert of pear with chocolate sauce is old, or at exists independently. It was good, but the semi-solid outer covering round the pear pieces and chocolate (which is most of the cake), is pretty tasteless and doesn't have a texture I find very appealing, though it's interesting to know that pear and chocolate is nice. If I'm look for dessert and there isn't cake I want, it seems like a good option. 

P. Mont Plus: 4 cakes

Sunday, I went to one of the few shops with eat-in open, Mont Plus, a shop with some history, I think. For eat in, we got two cakes: Optomiste and Chiboust Paysanne. Naturally, I choose the chiboust. It was a standard (sauteed) apple chiboust with chiboust cream and sour cream, and was excellent. 

The other was also very nice, with caramelized butter cream and walnuts in a rum raisin cake. I'm calling the Optomiste semi-excellent, at least for my companion. 

These were good enough to get two more for take out, which is more important than my vague memory. Neither was chosen by me. One was Valencia. This is a (soft?) meringue cake with almond, orange mousse, and orange pieces. I recall it being

quite nice, so I'm also putting it down as semi-excellent. 

And the last one was an Ali-Baba, which I'll also say was semi-excellent, because it was at least that, but I should probably have both these again and update the entry. I guess I need to visit Kobe more and speed up my updates.

Blogger has updated, and now trying to edit labels destroys the file, so no labels. I'm try to update them later when I figure out how to get the old interface.