Cake-off: Jean-Paul Hévin's Mille-feuille Chocolat over Frédéric Cassel's Mont Blanc Jewel

Sunday was a big day for running and cake. First, after doing my indoor workout, I ran to Ginza Mitsukoshi and got both cakes for the cake-off; Mille Feuille Chocolat from Jean-Paul Hévin and Mont Blanc Jewel from Frédéric Cassel. This was a third-round cake-off between two one-and-one seasonal cakes (the JPH for just 2 weeks this time but probably FC's will stick around through Christmas, I would imagine, but I'm not sure).

For running, I made my fourth attempt at running the Daita--Daizawa--Hatagaya--Kamiyama-chou--Kitazawa--Motoyoyogi-chou--Nishihara--Ooyama-chou--Shouto--Tomigaya--Uehara loop from memory, which is about 22 km long, plus a few kilometers to get there and the few kilometers that I had already run to Ginza. On the way, I noticed that I was in the right time window and there wasn't a huge line at Haritts Donuts & Coffee in Uehara, so I stopped (and waited for a couple people ahead of me) and got, I think, the Choco Plain (Donut), which despite being plain, has sugar (but not icing) on it. This is a very lightly fried, very spongy donut, though not as course a sponge as a typical yeast donut and definitely an improvement on various other donut shops, but not so exciting that I need a return trip.

Despite haven't gotten more than half way the first three attempts and making another course change that I never done even in early bicycle attempts, I was able to do it clockwise. Real time was just over 3 hours, which isn't bad considering stops (the longest to wade through the crowd to get to a shop near Shimo-Kitazawa station and back to take a picture for a site on a future side loop). I'll probably try counterclockwise next weekend, since I have three days.

The cake-off was somewhat anticlimactic. Like the previous round with the Mont Blanc Jewel, I couldn't sense why I had originally put it on the list (probably because at the time it was a mont-blanc with most of the chestnut task masked by fruit), so the Mille Feuille Chocolat, which was definitely better, wins and the Mont Blanc Jewel gets demoted to semi-great, which is still a high rating. Not sure what new cakes next month will bring out, but if nothing else, I can do what might be the last third-round of two-time winners.

Cake-off: Jean-Paul Hévin's Tarte au Chocolat over Frédéric Cassel's Mont Blanc Jewel

Since rain was forecast as increasing throughout the day and my feet seemed reasonably okay, I went our running south to visit sites on my neighborhood map through Hiroo. Took some pictures, found that one temple had been replaced by a construction project (I should have checked of what), so I deleted that loop from my neighborhood course. At 10 am, after maybe 50 minutes of running, I checked and found that I was farther away from Ginza Mitsukoshi than when I started, but not by a lot. I picked up a few more pictures along the way and got there around 11 am. I was able to get both of my target cakes, Jean-Paul Hévin's Tarte au Chocolat and Frédéric Cassel's Mont Blanc Jewel, for a second-round cake-off. The latter was next in the list for the round and the former will end its one-month run tomorrow. The big discovery, though, was that Ginza Mitsukoshi had the JPH Mille-feuille Chocolat, which I've been looked for and would have been a higher priority. Apparently, it is an exclusive there, so now I'm going to need to run around every month checking every shop for unannounced exclusives, which is inconvenient, but does provide some direction to my running. Wish I had noticed before I had the second-to-last day of the month after I'd already bought one cake.

Ate the cakes at home. Hope that the issue of overlooking a cake did not affect my appreciation, but I has having a hard time sensing the greatness today. Still, definitely excellent cakes and I definitely see the unique good points of both with respect to my great cakes list. I'm giving the round to the tart and marking the mont-blanc down as possibly not great (it will get another round, but if I'm not convinced then, I'll knock it down to semigreat). It's good point is probably that it is the fruitiest mont-blancs on my list. If JPH has a couple new cakes next month, I'll be able to get them, but otherwise I've noticed that it's time for me to try something new of theirs, fresh cake or not, which goes well with my newly recognized need to visit their different shops more regularly (though I'm still only going to buy non-cake things from Isetan and Mitsukoshi, probably).

Cake-off: Mont-Blanc Jewel over Mont-Poire Yuzu

View of south center of Hibiya Park

Started off by running to Mitsukoshi in Ginza to get there near opening time so that I could get both cakes for a cake-off: Mont-Poire Yuzu from Jean-Paul Hévin and Mont-Blanc Jewel from Frédéric Cassel. It wasn't too hot going, but was heating up coming back. I saw some people with "staff" shirts, so there was probably some sort of specific running event along the inner moat coarse, but since there would always be a lot of people on it Sunday morning, I think, there did not seem to be that much of an effect. I walked underground from the corner of Hibiya Park, so the running was less than 5 km each way, 11 km/h going and 9 km/h coming back.

Before eating my cake, I went out to do more month survey of other shops looking for seasonal great cakes but did not find the two tarts I was looking for at Paris S'éveille and Ryoura. It was about a 30 km ride.

Both cakes were great and reminded me that eating great cake is the goal, so I should balance out trying new cakes with enjoying known ones. It's hard to choose between these two. They are both mainly chestnut, but fairly different. The FC give a dense cake with cassis (currant) for flavor on a dense butter (? still haven't studied how to make different kinds of tarts so much, beyond the crusts) tart, whereas JPH flavors with pear and yuzu and has very light whipped cream in the middle on a very light meringue base. Different, but both great. In the end, I thought the cassis flavoring was more effective, but I hope to have the pear and yuzu again next year.

Frédéric Cassel: Mont Blanc Jewel

Went to Ginza, walking the first 1 km, then jogging 3.6 km to the edge, with the rest walking. Actually, the first kilometer was closer to 7 km/h than the initial "running", which averaged about 6.8 km/m, but the 6 km of walking averaged 6 km/m.

Slowly expanding my running rather than adding much weekly distance, which is about 60 km/week. Don't have the budget for much run tomorrow and spent enough on cake today, so I'll probably take tomorrow off and uses a less direct route to Bigarreaux Thursday (assuming the rain doesn't discourage me).

Had expected to go to Dalloyau, but stopped in at Frédéric Cassel, and they had one of their autumn specials, Mont Blanc Jewel. Besides the obvious chestnut cream and the candied (so some degree) chestnut cream on top with a little whipped cream, there was relatively little whipped cream inside, which was instead red currant compote (I had guessed blue berries actually, though not a strong separate taste) on a little doom of (baked) meringue on top a tart base. It's a tart base, but warning: it's pasted down pretty firmly, so you aren't going to pick it up easily. This was great, a "harmony" of chestnut and currant, as they claim, which does not surprise me at 864 yen. Taking a picture at a park in the rain, so a little cramped. A better picture here.

Tried to make creme au beurre rose as one part of a cake (fancy cake number 4). Seems pretty easy, except still not that great at the Italian meringue. Got a lot of rose syrup now,, though and no other recipes. Need to get a macaron book.