Les Années Folles: Sans Farine

Two weekends ago now, I was working through the quite fine shop list to get 4th cakes and visited Les Années Folles for a new cake. They had various nutty ones and I chose Sans Farine. I managed to photograph the card, so I can report confidently that it had caramelized hazelnuts, royaltine "diplomat", which is maybe a kind of paillete feuilletine (crape flakes), vanilla whipped cream, and orange. Under the (uncredited) chocolate shell is layers of cake and whipped cream, though I can't remember the distribution of ingredient's beyond that at this point. It's a little packaged snack-cake like in design, but I like it and can call it excellent. This shop will make the cut.

Cake-off: Sadaharu Aoki's Marron Fruits Rouges over Jean-Paul Hévin's Saint Honoré

Friday, which as planned as a no-cake day, despite some business after work, I managed to get down and tackle the 4 little loops I wanted ending in Ebisu-Nishi. First though, I use a coupon I had for a 5% discount on a pastry from Patisserie Les Annees Folles nearby (on the other side of Ebisu Park). I hadn't had a pastry from there before because I had thought they don't have them (you have to look opposite the cake display, or just from the outside, through the window next to the door). I got a Pain au Chocolat, which I rated excellent based on proper construction and reasonable tasting chocolate, but see the later comment about pastries. I was successful at finishing of three more loops, but missed the lowest priority one. Unfortunately, by taking a different route, I went by the Salvation Army Hall, and realized that it deserved to be an official site (after see online pictures verifying it's basically a church), which means I have to shift the route to go by the front route.  This put the Daikanyama-chou--Ebisunishi--Hachiyama-chou--Nanpeidai-chou--Sakuragaoka-chou--Sarugaku-chou--Shibuya--Uguisudani-chou loop back at the top of the list of priorities, thought that turned out to be the least of reasons that it should have been.

Saturday, I was the last cake-off of the season for Jean-Paul Hévin's Saint Honoré, which gets replaced in October. Being one and one, it was set to match up against another seasonal cake that I've been looking forward to revisiting, Sadaharu Aoki's Marron Fruits Rouges. After a morning appointment, I headed to Isetan and got both. Before eating, though, I went out by bicycle to review again the Daita--Daizawa--Hatagaya--Kamiyama-chou--Kitazawa--Motoyoyogi-chou--Nishihara--Ooyama-chou--Shouto--Tomigaya--Uehara loop, which I need to get to eventually, This was my first time that I actually finished within the three hours allotted. I did split off southwest tip due to finding a fairly large overlooked road/track-side shrine. I also found a shop that changed it's name, a chocolate shop that opened a cake branch and another little shrine, plus verified a cake shop and coffee shop with baked goods that I had spotted online. I also ruled out a few things. I'm left with a 22 km loop that I know maybe half pretty good.

Back to the cake-off, JPH's cake was good, but I wasn't really feeling the greatness, so it goes on notice. The win goes to Sadaharu Aoki's, whose chestnut past cake is a much better construction to deliver the flavors than a typical mont-blanc (radial symmetry is not that efficient for balanced eating in complicated cakes), though wouldn't work with a lot of meringue and whipped cream, if that's what you're after.

Saturday night, I tried to do the above mentioned Daikanyama-chou--Ebisunishi--Hachiyama-chou--Nanpeidai-chou--Sakuragaoka-chou--Sarugaku-chou--Shibuya--Uguisudani-chou loop, as well as a little exploring of the Ebisu Stn. area, since I'm extending the course through the subway access tunnels in that direction. Unfortunately, I noticed two points where my course violated the rules: was on the wrong side of the road in front of a weird shrine didn't go past the front of a church. I used possible solutions made up on the fly without consulting the map, but neither turned out to be optimal, so this run doesn't count, though it wouldn't have mattered, because reviewing the Ebisu area, I font a chocolatier who had moved north to this loop just over the weekend, which I couldn't ignore. On the way, I stopped and got another pastry from Les Années Folles (for double the discount for being the second one before Sept. 30), this time Croissant aux Amandes. It was good, but nothing exciting and dry. Which brings me to my remark about pastries: I should give up sampling them at night and throw out all my old evaluations, because they just can't want that long. I want something to get on non-cake days at night, it's going to need to be something hardier than pastries (and cake), like macaron, which aren't necessarily best freshly made.

Les Années Folles: Pistache Griotte

After resting a day, I went for a run down to Les Années Folles to pick up a third (blogged) cake from a shop on my bloated quite good list. This is about a 10 km run, so typical, though I'm not used to running down to there directly, so there were some wrong turns.

I usually steer clear of cherry in cakes, and I've have consistently bad experiences with pistachio and cherry, though that relates to the commonness of the pairing and my trying lots of shops. Nevertheless, or because of this, it seemed time to give cherry a chance, as otherwise I've been into pistachio cakes recently, and got the Pistache Griotte. I was thinking that cherry as an accent to pistachio was reasonable, but actually this cake was more of the reverse, or maybe just a complete harmonization. In any case, it was definitely cherry and I was will to accept and appreciate that this time. The top decoration did not have much holding it place, it it ended up in a corner of the box, but mostly the cake was as original received.

Les Années Folles [Hinka Rinka counter]: Caramel Chocolat

Did a Ginza run to follow up on (P. Les) Années Folles, since there is a counter in Hinka Rinka in Tokyu Plaza Ginza. I started off a somewhat fast 8 km/h for 2 km, where it's most crowded and there are frequent lights (I stop the chronometer, but I slow down approaching hoping not to, at least warming up). The rest was a slow 9 km/h (that is, not really that much faster), which ended up being about 7 km, since I was able to just barely average above 8.5 km/h coming back. So not my longest run recent run, but my longest stretch of about 9 km/h.



The cake was Caramel Chocolat, which was maybe not a great choice, but not a huge selection at the counter and I don't like cherries in my cake usually, so that that ruled out the other chocolate and the pistachio cakes. The caramel was not terrible (not coffee bitter), but not really the sweet milk caramel that I like. There were pear pieces inside, which were somewhat interesting. The bottom was chocolate mousse/cream;  not sure what the differences is, except you whip chocolate but for my chocolate cream cake, you only whip the cream and then combine it with the prepared chocolate mixture (you need some hot milk first to dissolve the gelatin and then the chocolate in). Under that, was a thin chocolate sponge/biscuit bottom layer, which was good enough but nothing special. I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and call it good, but it means that I can go back to just thinking of this shop as good, which was my general impression pre-blog.

My last homemade fancy cake (#7) was "Sphere", though it isn't. As always, I didn't do the decoration part, though I intend to do with chocolate macaron with (homemade) raspberry jam that is supposed to be on top later. This was like chocolate cream cakes (I now know) that I've had before and not thought much of. All I could taste was the chocolate, even though the first two parts are a pistachio macaron base and a cream raspberry layer, which I tasted by themselves and they were excellent and good. If it had been better chocolate, maybe it would have been better cake, but that doesn't really justify the other parts being it beyond structure and color. I actually didn't do a great job on the creme chocolat either, since I had trouble whipping the cream again. I should never try to do less than a full 200 ml, since it never works well for me (this time was half a 100 ml pack). Besides the pistachio base, the chocolate sauce that goes on top is excellent, glacage chocolat, which used the same cheap grocery store chocolate (although also an equal amount compound chocolate for coating, which I got from baking supply store Cuoca).

I might skip doing the whole next cake, "Soleil", which is another fruit (mixed ) in white chocolate, so too much like the orange cake I did and never posted a picture of (what a monster that was, but the Bavarian hazelnut part was good). I do want to try the biscuit dacquoise orange base, although I'm not sure that I'll bother with the orange, since I need half a grated orange peal (if I was making 25 of them) and I don't have the best grater for that.

Les Années Folles: Noisette Orange

P. les Années Folles is at Isetan fro a way from yesterday, so, even though my experience is that they aren't so great, since I haven't posted on them and they are convenient now, I went. I got the Noisette Orange, which is a chocolate mousse/cream cake with hazelnuts and orange. Neither the hazelnuts nor the orange is so powerful, for good and bad, but they did a good job and this was a combination of ingredients that I appreciate, so I should visit them again soon. Probably won't get to that at Isetan again, but they are actually theoretically accessible on a weekday run, though farther than I've run recently (as is true of most places).

The run was just down to the Meiji Gaien course, where I did three laps. Like the last run, I was slow at the beginning for not real reason, around 7 km/h, but I stuck to at least 8 km/h on the track (where there are 100 m markers). I did the first 525 m at 8 km/h, then alternated between 8 and 9 km/h in 200 m stretches (3 times) then finished the lap at 10 km/h, which is sort of actually running instead of jogging, for the last 125 m. Next lap was the same, and then I did the last half lap and home at 8+ km/h.

Will take tomorrow off, though Saturday will probably be cycling again rather than running, since I want to do some cake-making related shopping for forms and whatever the chocolate tempering sheet is for making strips of chocolate, similar to the above, as well as other food shopping.