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.

L'Essentielle: Citron Praliné

Jogged up to L'Essentielle for the first time.

I passed Porte Bonheur, which was closed again, so I'm doubting the Kasuga/Myougadani branch is ever open these days. Fortunately, L'Essentielle was. I got the Citron Praliné for 500 yen and ate in at the outside table (which was a little windy today). It's a nice little place with several tables inside, as well. There were a couple other people eating in inside, which is not a lot around 1 pm on a Saturday, but is still a good sign. The cakes are properly fancy cake, that is, for adults. This was was lemon cream and praliné. Actually, the praliné was fairly crystalline, so it was like there was an layer of crushed ice, being basically dry rather than a paste or crunchy from lots pieces versus powder, but it did not really affect the over all texture of the cake, since it's not a thick layer. The cake was definitely good, so I wouldn't mind going there again, but not particularly special to make going there a priority.

The run was okay. Last post's suggestion that I needed to move to 11 km/h for my training runs was premature. My overly fast running Thursday night left one knee sore the next day, which came back a little bit at the end of today's run. So I tried to keep it slower, on the high side of 8 km/h going out and the low side of 9 km/h coming back. Total, it was about 10 km. I had planned to go farther tomorrow, but I'll see how my knee is.

I did make carob brownies yesterday, and had another today with lunch. Also definitely good.