L'Essentielle, Cassisier

Thinking back to Wednesday, I went first Isetan from their visiting shop. I had one cake from L'Essentielle, so I figured I'd try another. I got the Cassisier. For running, I visited various parts of my neighborhood running course that I wanted to change and verified that they would work. I wanted to shorted some parts that I have to use to go most places and decided that I didn't want to cut through Keio Univ. Hospital, though people always have at that point. The original plan had been for a short run, but it ended up about an hour, once I connected up the parts.

The Cassisier, which is obviously cassis (black currant), is white chocolate based and has star anise as the spice accent (accents). This is just too soft a cake for me. I need a biscuit, cookie, or crunchy layer, I guess. There was enough going on with the top that I have some respect for it, so I'm calling it good, but I'm not in a hurry to sample from them again.

I planned no running for Friday, so Thursday I went for a long run to try to do a successful one-way neighborhood run to what I thought were the nearest new parts, as well as a little part that want to reacquaint myself with that was convenient to add.  These included absolutely confirming the Nishiebisu east and west loops, followed by the new Ebisu--Hiroo east and west loops. I'll have to change the last one, maybe, because I've since found a new religion church that I missed, but that's no big deal. I also did the Higashi north loop on the way home, just so I can skip it when I redo the central and south loops. I ran into one pedestrian bridge blocked off, so I cheated and used the intersection to cross, but I'm not going to scrap the run for that. If I had known, I would have crossed at a different bridge, though it's longer, but I wan't willing to double-back to get to it. It was a +2 h run, so I made use of a new snack source only the route, the Baking Shu in the Shibuya Stream complex and got Raisin Coupé, which is a bun. After an hour of running, I needed it. Actually, I sent my lunch hour trying to get a question answered by the cell phone company person, so I was pretty underfed that day (though more chocolate than usual). It might have been too much bread for another day, but it was 200 (approximately) well spent, and good.

Friday, I refrained from running, but there was shopping and exercising indoors, so I got a Chausson aux Pommes from Hediard. It's very precisely made, but ultimately boring, though still good.

Cake-off: Sadaharu Aoki's Cassisier over Très Calme's Mont Blanc

Started off with morning cycling with the new bike to check out the route to Maison Douce. Google had a short cut from the main road, but I'm not the only one it told about and it's not really wide enough even for two large cars to pass each other without pedestrians and cyclists, so I think I'll just put up with the noise along the main road. It was about 28 km and I was back in under a couple hours. No major hills, but I did manage to get it to top gear on one somewhat downward stretch.

For cake, I decided to do a cake off with the nearly reappeared Cassisier (though I spelled it Cassissier before, though I'm not sure whether I was correcting their spelling then) from Sadaharu Aoki. First, though, I had to run up to Très Calme, which I tried to do by the Google route, but ended up too far west by one bridge and maybe did more climbing than necessary. It was still cool (with a sweat-soaked shirt in a breeze) with clouds, until 10:30, but then got pretty hot when the sun came out. It's about 13 km round trip and I could manage 10 km/h up and 9 km/h, despite heat and slopes (though only about 30 m each way). Then I hit Isetan for Cassisier and confirmed the actual ingredients in my previous Sadaharu Aoki visit. I also did a short (< 1 km) shopping run after that, all these at around 9 km/h or more.

Both of these cakes are definitely excellent, so I don't want to demote them, but neither stood out strongly. In the end, I'm giving it to Cassisier based on degree of difference from other great cakes (I've had other great Mont Blanc), but the Mont Blanc would win for value, since it's about 60% of the price.