Juchheim Die Meister, Schokosahne

This one will be quick. I used my second coupon for the Odakyu food area to follow up on a second cake from a potentially fine shop. This time was Juchheim Die Meister, which is also found in Isetan, where I had gotten the first cake some time ago. There might not have been another choice, and certainly there wasn't more than one on a Friday evening, but I was happy to get Schokosahne, which is their chocolate cake. It's layers of milk and dark (I assume) chocolate cream between sponge layers. Not exciting, but the chocolate taste was not bad. The problem was almond slivers. Otherwise totally soft cake with little hard spikes (hiding somewhere)? Sorry, that doesn't work for me, but I'll give it an "OK". I'll actively avoid this chain in the future and be suspicious of the Juchheim family of brands.

  

Wittamer, Thé et Raisin

Had some coupons for the food sections of Odakyu. The cake selection is pretty weak, but I never willowed the "fine" list of shops that seem to be just average, so now I'm after getting second cakes from all, which should take a few years. The first of two counters (and coupons), was Wittamer, which is a Belgian brand, apparently. It's pretty widespread, though this was also probably where I got my first cake from them. This time I steered clear of the obvious choices and when with Thé et Raisin, maybe because I previous takeout cake was a basic chocolate cake. As the name suggests, this is tea (Earl Grey) and grape (though it actually is raisin, the dried form), with some rum. It was a well-made cake with no out of place flavors. Good but bland in a competent way. Certainly, being a safe place to get consistent cakes had it's merits, but I don't expect I'll need to visit again.

The above was the cake from Monday night. Full disclosure, I had some non-patisserie cakes of high quality Saturday afternoon as a part of an afternoon tea set. 

I think the ones with berry halves are actually pear, whereas the little one's above are chestnut madeleines, with the larger ones to the left behind the glass desserts being sweet potato mont-blancs. The middle layers was savories and the bottom was mainly tiny scones. This was also at Odakyu, in that it was their 20th floor lounge in the Southern Tower of the Century Hotel at Shinjuku.

Sweets Paradise, Baked Chocolate

This is more a curiosity than useful, since the Sweets Paradis Harajuku shop, which would have been on the local running map with a slight expansion. I got this at the Shinjuku Stn. counter, which now also closed, I think, though they have a shop shown open on the other side of the station in Shinjuku 3, which technically is accessible from the tunnels entering in Shinjuku 4, though I'm certainly not intending to visit every place that is true for. This is, of course, is Baked Chocolate (or that's what my notes say; guess "Gateau Chocolat" would be too fancy). It's maybe the lightest of it's type I've ever had, but for 108 yen, I can say that it was good. Maybe I've spurge for something in the 200 yen range next time. 

Kyobashi Sembikiya, Fruits Savarin

Saturday, I was busy, but was offered cake, and I guess I was tired, because I accepted buying at Odakyu rather than going to Isetan, just because it was too hard to think what I wanted at Isetan (whereas I know there's nothing I want at Odakyu). Anyway, Kyobashi Sembikiya is not bad, so we got a couple things, including, I think Fruits Savarin. Note that this had no alcohol taste, just fruit, but otherwise was reasonably good. The other is a melon bavarois, which could be an ingredient of cake, but here is just cream, so I'm not keeping track of it. It was fine, and the melon was more memorable than the other fruit, at least.