Très Calme, Printemps

Started Sunday (today!) with a cake-off win inspired visit to Très Calme, where among the new cakes I went with the Printemps, which seemed a longshot, but something different appealed to me more than just something with my favorite flavors. Not that it was obvious what flavor a pinkish mont-blanc-shaped cake named 'spring' from the shop of someone on the record for not liking mont-blanc in general, due to the taste and texture of chestnuts. This particular cake was strawberry flavored, with the, I assume, chestnut paste used to cut that and vice versus (wasn't any distinctive chestnut flavor). The base was consistent with the fruit, being like a flaky pie crust, though just on the bottom, not folded up on the sides like a pie or tart. It was good.

(P.) Avranches Guesnay: Mille-Feuille Vanille

Cycled to (Patisserie) Avranches Guesnay in Bunkyo-ku. I was worried that it would be too crowded an area to park a bicycle, but the shop is between exits for Kasuga, so most of the subway traffic doesn't need to walk past.  

I got the Mille-Feuille Vanille for 605 yen, as this was the only one marked as "recommendation". Being a standard cake, it's hard for it to be great, but on the other hand, it's something that I like, so I'm not likely to rate it low. I struggled between rating it good and excellent, which looking at previously posts on mille-feuille did not much help with except that this was definitely better than Fraoula's good mille-feuille, which was the kind where only flakes are used rather than whole biscuits, making it easy to eat but without a main feature. Since this is a newly visited shop for me, I decided to call the cake excellent, and thus tentatively the shop, and visit them again soon. The picture didn't turn out so great; not sure why it's zoomed in so much.

It was short trip, so I swung through Ginza on the way back and verified where I could park and walked down to Tokyu Plaza Ginza in order to verify that Esquisse Cinq has takeout cake, as reported by Sweet Sonobe. I know the café is really expensive, so I gave up going there unless the cake turns out to be really good (in which case, I could go for my birthday). The takeout is also expensive and limited, but I'll probably still some time. A better choice for me for a café would be Cacao Market by Mariebelle (Hinka Rinka 3rd), which was empty around noon on the holiday.

Hike to Kneten: Schokoladenkuchen

Feel fine today, so I'm ready to do a long run (not today) when I get some time, but it sort of destroys the day, so I feel like I should do some other things.

Today is rain, so I hiked there, like in the old days before I could run in Tokyo. It's about 5 km there, but I didn't take the shortest route, especially coming back, so it was about 12 km total. Got the Schokoladenkuchen (chocolate cake) for the quite reasonable 430 yen. It seems to be chocolate whipped cream between layers of fairly light cake (if it were heavier, it couldn't be held up by cream). I prefer something heavier, but this was definitely good for chocolate cake of this type; I've had experience with bad ones, so I appreciated this, although after one-third, I would have been happy to stop and move on to something else, although not because the flavor overstays its welcome, just it's no so much my thing. My favorite part was caramelized hazelnuts on top. If you put the chocolate in the cake and doubled the density and between put layers of crushed caramelized hazelnuts with just enough whited cream to keep them in place, that would definitely bring me back. Otherwise, the early hours (7:30 to 19:00) mean that I would maybe consider visiting again for something else on another rainy morning. Sorry, I should have moved the fork and focused better on the cake, to get the auto-focus working better.