Au Bon Vieux Temps: Mont-Blanc

As usual, I'm behind on most things, such as answering mail and messages. Sunday, I went cycling for about 3 hours. As reward for winning a cake-off, I got a new cake from Au Bon Vieux Temps, Mont-Blanc, not that it's likely new to them. Unfortunately, for the cake, it had a long trip by bicycle after that, so it was plastered up against the side of the box by the time I got to it. I scraped it off as best I could, but imagine it symmetric to begin with, but still small. It was a pretty basic Mont-Blanc, being a cream surrounded by a relatively thin layer of mind chestnut paste on a forgettable meringue base. It was basically good but pretty far from what I want in cake. I more positive news, The cake I want for the next 1st-round cake-off was still available, at least as of last Sunday, so I'm going to go for Afternoon.

Monday, I tried to get the new cake appearing today at Jean-Paul Hévin but I was pretty late, so it seemed to be sold out (lots of other cakes still there after 7, though. I'll try again tomorrow. Instead, I got a Croissant from Andersen. I've had their Croissant before and knew to expect something good but not great. What I really wanted to do was see whether heating it up in the oven a little would be okay, since, in this weather, I've had experiences with pasties that I regretted eating cold. 2.5 min at 100 degC seemed fine. The outside flake wasn't very stable to begin with (it perhaps did not have the most gentle return home, since I had other shopping to do and my normal bag to carry) but wasn't harmed by the over. The running Monday was just over 65 minutes down to the Kirakawachou-Kioichou Loop, where I turned too early going north, and then back along the Akasaka North Loop, where I missed one turn. However, I discovered a crosswalk that I had not noticed before connecting to the Akasaka West Loop and making it possible to have one big loop from Akasaka down through the north edge of Roppongi rather than long links that I have to return by. The 60-kilometer run is going to wait until I can sort it out.

Au Bon Vieux Temps: La France & Mogador

Cycled to Au Bon Vieux Temps in Oyamadai again and got two cakes, which was a mistake. I did multiple cakes by myself early on, justifying it with the exercise, but it's too much. I tried to think carefully in choosing, since I don't expect everything from even near-great places to be to my liking, but I've had their regulars already and I'm not that thrilled by their fancy little fruit tarts. As it turns out, I choose two very similar things, but I think I've had another similar thing to both of these before, but apparently not recently enough to post on it, because I can't find any other mention of chocolate mousse (which they use in a lot of things) and raspberry. These were 648 yen each, so also more than I originally planned to spend. Didn't see their little potato-shaped one for 300 yen this time.

The cakes were La France, which is a mousse cube bounded by a thin layer of solid chocolate under a layer of raspberry jelly, with some more raspberry chocolate filling in the middle. There is also a little solid chocolate cup on top filled with raspberry sauce, which I was surprised was not spilled by a couple kilometers by bicycle to get to a park. This was excellent. The solid chocolate is a good choice to avoid having just a gummy raspberry layer, although, of course, it breaks into pieces when you eat it.

The other cake was a block of chocolate mousse with thin layers of raspberry on top of a layer of what, phonetically, was written li/ri oh le/re, which I did not recognize as the French "riz au lait", which of course means rice pudding (in this case, baked, or at least allowed to set up solid). The raspberry and mousse were essentially the same as the other cake, and were good. The rice pudding was supposed to be flavored with jasmine, though even trying to eat alone, I couldn't detect anything. It was okay at the time, although not really useful except as a base, but the after-texture, if there is such the thing, I did not like (rubbery pieces of rice pudding rice grain pieces in nooks of my mouth). Still it was not bad, but I'll try to avoid such rice pudding based cakes in the future. Still, with one excellent cake to partially balance things out, I'll keep treating them as a near-great shop and eventually get back there for a 12th cake, though I'll need several cakes from various other great and near-great places before I'll ready to do that.

Au Bon Vieux Temps: Marjolaine

Did a round trip to Au Bon Vieux Temps in Oyamadai (well, Todoroki, actually, but the nearest station is Oyamadai Station, also in Todoroki but next to Oyamadai, so let's go by that): 25 km. Kept up a good pace, definitely 6+ km/h and not that much slower coming back. Happily, my feet didn't turn red, unlike the big walk last Thursday, so I did something right. Not so sure about my knees yet, crossing my fingers, but I plan to rest tomorrow anyway.

Got the Marjolaine, for, I forget how much, around 500 yen, anyway. 496 yen? They keep their regular individual cakes small, more than do the big international brands, not high priced, unlike their frozen deserts. This was a great cake, and the best Marjolaine that I've had, I think. Not sure whether they made Japonaisemasse as the biscuit, as it is not baked that dark, but it's hazelnut dark and tastes right. They went with powered sugar on top and included a layer nut slivers in the creme praline. The ganache layer is pretty thin, but seems a good choice for keeping the chocolate from taking over from the praline.

Finally, a near-great shop lives up to its designation, so I'll give it a new color on the map and mark it and other ones as such when it's convenient. Not sure when I'll get back to this shop, as it's a good distance, but if the weather ever clears up (typhoons keep bring in rain), I can take the bicycle out for more trips to these farther ones.