Ces Jours, Aroma [updated]

To change things up, I went back to hitting a shop on my quite great list, though I'm still adding new ones faster than I'm ticking off ones with three net cakes. There are a lot of local ones and ones I can hit weekdays, so maybe I'll do one next week, though I'm conflicted about hitting JPH again. Anyway, the long planned trip to Ces Jours was finally carried out. It was about a 70-minute each way.

I went for Aroma, as the type of cake I like, but it was a poor choice for transporting by bicycle. I'm skeptical about the design, though, as the top half is jell, with nothing keeping it on, so I'm not sure that a long return by train would have completely saved it. It's lychee, rose, and raspberry, well balanced. Inside is lychee comport, which works well. The texture is somewhat limited, but reasonable (the outside shell of the bottom gives a little crunch, I forget from what kind of nuts, so let's say pistachio, which would go with the flavor). This was definitely at least definitely good, but I was conflicted about whether it is excellent, based on what I perceive as its relative design flaws. In the end, I decided to just split the difference and call it semi-excellent, which isn't enough to keep it in the quite good shops, though it will be able to keep a position in the next lower rank (currently good), when I have to split it due to too many shops (its already 36 over the target 64 and I need to demote another 26 from quite good, but even including the latter, I don't have a full 64 that are obviously above the minimum and get second cakes from the just good shops with one cake isn't going to be a project I'm going to start any time soon). Still, it's been a little over 3 years since I've been there anyway, and with 3 cakes, don't to have need to visit them again: just too many shops in Tokyo.

Ces Jour: Opera Equateur

Today I cycled to P. Ces Jours and took the "chef"'s recommendation, the Opera Equateur for 486 yen. There was some confusion when I was ordering because the card was in front of a completely different cake, a mostly white one, so I was assumed the Kaoka chocolate was white (since the rest of the card that I had time to read just went on and on about how great and fruity it smelled ). The actual cake is a dark chocolate cake which I've read elsewhere has almond in the biscuit part, which makes sense. Couldn't smell anything outside in the strong wind (it blew over after this photo, but was saved by the fact that it is really dense and it landed flat on the far side, which still has it's plastic. Sometimes I thick really dense chocolate cake is really great, but in this case, even though it was definitely good, I guess I've had enough other good dense chocolate cake not to feel that it was exceptional. Still, it was a good, heavy chocolate cake and it wouldn't be out of place at a great shop, but it would still probably not be the cake that I remembered afterward (since presumably if they are a great shop, they have other things that I definitely think are great). So I'm taking P. Ces Jours gets a "good?" designation instead of an "excellent?" designation on the map.
I also stopped at La Saison Boulangerie because I am am greedy. I got a Chocolate Danish for 194 yen. This also was good.

So currently, I have 9 shops marked as being "great" and 39 marked as being "excellent", although one of those sells just more cookie-like mille feuille, three are bakeries with excellent bread or pastries, one is a cheesecake shop, one is a tea salon (no takeout), and one is a chocolate shops with a single fresh chocolate tart, which means that none of them are a priority for comparison, leaving 32 potentially excellent fresh (you are supposed to eat today) cake shops. All the ones due for another visit are within "running" distance (when I can run, or I can try night cycling, if it comes to that), so I'm thinking I should do new shops for weekends and holidays first and save the. However, I want great cake next, and I've only posted 7 cakes from Paris S'Eveille (plus two pastries), so I've talked myself into going there tomorrow (really, I want to visit Cuoca's chocolate selection and add to my 7.5 cm brioche form set, although I have 12 and I only used 10 to make pecan-pie tarts, which I baked too long or too hot, although still good).

39 km loop through P. Ces Jours: Yuzu

Took Setagaya Road west to Patiserie Ces Jours in the little city Komae just beyond Setagaya District, which seems a good route. It's a major road, so there is traffic but the sidewalk is sufficient, and some of it is even brick, which is usually the best. Still felt sore, so I didn't press it. I should probably not try speed running for a while.

The cake I chose was Yuzu, based on that it was marked as having won a prize somewhere. It's four layers: white chocolate, yuzu, white chocolate again, and a base which seems to be a gram cracker crust or similar embedded in a sweet caramel-like base (not a strong taste, but caramel color and sweet) that was hard but not crystalline or chewy. It was a reasonable 464 yen and excellent. The white chocolate part was more gelatinous than I like in general, but that might be necessary to keep the yuzu from leaking into it. Sorry, the picture turned out to be from the back, with the plastic still on the facing side.

Accidentally went back to Setagaya Road, so I took it to the river Nogawa and followed it up to Route 20, which is the Koshu Kaido. I've been along that river before, and it's nice to jog along. For Route 20, that would be the road I would use to go to Takao. Currently, I could certainly make it there and I assume force myself up the mountain and back down, but I'm not ready to commit to running back afterward and I don't want to pay train fare for a one-way run unless necessary (due to physical condition or conditions). I stopped at Yu Sasage and verified that they still exists in the same place and were busy. I might have gotten a shu cream or something there if I were willing to wait, but when to Boulangerie Puku-gari and got a little cream cheese with walnut sandwiched between what turned out to be round pieces of white bread with a lot of sugar on the outside. Won't be going back there, I expect.

Total, it was about 39 km, and I ran it in about 4 05', so slow but not terrible.