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).

Sunday without running: Fraoula and Aigre-Douce

It as a rest day, so I was lazy and did not take notes. After other shopping, I went to Fraoula and got (update: bostoc?) the below. The first is salted caramel macarons, although they just seemed like macarons to me. The set was only about 400 yen, which is reasonable. They are slightly smaller than average, but not tiny. I recommend with tea or sharing, since by the third one I was finding them a little too sweet. I wish I could remember what the other thing is. It's from the baked things and is only about 200 yen but is better than most cakes. It involves a lot of eggs. There are almond slices there, but the taste is of maple. Whatever it is, it is great and I get it when I can.

This sad thing is a Charlotte aux (or maybe "de") Framboise. Again, I've demonstrated the futility of trying to use the bicycle basket to carry cake. If I go on a ride, I should just eat where I go. Anyway, there is some raspberry in there, but actually the main part of the center is a light lemon chiboust, or maybe the chiboust is the top part, but that does not seem to match other things I've seen called chiboust in Japan. Anyway, the middle part is semi-frozen, or starts close to that, and then there are some raspberries on the bottom. I'm not that much into Charlotte's, I guess, although I've had ones that used more a biscuit for constructing the ring around the soft middle, which I like better.

This was supposed to be based on my mother's recipe for cheese pie (cake), but I did a major substitution so it doesn't taste like anything I've had before. Also, you're not supposed to brown the top, but I can't see that it's hurt any thing. The inside seems a little soft, if anything, so it's not overcooked. It still tastes good, but I'll try to do it properly next time, as I'd like a firmer texture in the cooked cheese. Also, I should not have used the pie crust (although so delicious with olive oil) recipe that goes with it, since it's definitely a pie crust and I'm using 14 cm tart forms (just bought a third one Saturday: they're expensive). One of these used a leftover tart dough from my custard tart experiments (with only two tart forms), so I'll eventually compare the crusts.

Full disclosure, I also finally failed to resist the cinnamon bun at La Saison near Sanmiyabashi Station. It was as a large cinnamon bun should be (especially if it is 400 yen plus).