Il Pleut sur la Seine, Today's Cake

Visiting exceptional shops, I hit Il Pleut sur la Seine second on Sunday, which opened after being closed from the beginning of the state of emergency being declared, I think. I got "Today's Cake", which was how it was labeled. I asked the name and they told me, but I've forgotten, something not helpful or original, 1 word, like "seduction" or "satisfaction", but neither of those, I think. Anyway, I don't think it's a regular, although it s standard type I've seen elsewhere and once thought was great: it's three layers of bitter, milk, and white chocolate. Really, my tastes have moved on, so I should no better. It's not cheap, either. Of course, it is well made with good ingredients, so it was good, but it didn't make me want to return soon.

Jean-Paul Hévin, Longchamp Feuilleté

Sunday, I went out a couple more hours by bicycle and picked up photos a new missed places in otherwise finished maps and corrected an order for cake for Tuesday (I keep forgetting to check what I've had before). Then I went out and got Longchamp Feuilleté from Jean-Paul Hévin at Ginza Mitsukoshi. Also, I saw a new pastry a Dalloyau, Boule de Marron I think they were calling it, so I had to get that. On the way to my actual necessary errand for being in the Tokyo Station area, I swung by Toshi Yoroizuka and happily saw that they had a great cake from 2015 in the line-up (and claimed that it would stay in the line-up for the season, i.e., until December), so now I know what I want to do for a cake-off next weekend. I'll have four chances to find something else great, otherwise I'll be running to Ryoura on Saturday, take the train back, and run to maybe to Tokyo Midtown (which is closer than Kyoubashi, where I went today).

Today's cake was fill of good things that I like, dark chocolate mousse and both almond meringue and feuilleté, though the latter made it tend to break up into small chunks, which is a little awkward using a tiny cake fork. Maybe I should use a spoon. I still haven't found a sharp table knife for cutting cake (I assume sharp would be better than a serrated blade). It was excellent cake, though I've rating other of the similar cakes higher; it could be I'm spoiled now or just I liked the simpler versions (I think they were simpler).

The Boule de Marron seemed deflated in that there did not seem to be enough pastry for the amount of chestnut, at least for me, though I'm sure more people would complain if they were cheap with the chestnut. Still, it was good, but it reminds me that I want to get to Clair de Lune again, I hope Wednesday of this week, though for cake this time, not pastry, though a pastry from there on Sunday wouldn't go wrong.

Don't really need my camera in super-wide mode for cake, but I think I've already fixed that now.

Sunday: Chocolat Chic

No posts for a week because I caught a cold. I blame stress, but not from running (actually, caught it after a rest day). Thought yesterday (Monday) that today would be the day for running, but my nose is not quite there. Maybe tomorrow. Anyway, I'm updating from the weekend, now that I'm a little free.

Sunday, we got a couple pieces of cake at Isetan from Chocolat Chic, who were visiting. Only recently have I been going back to the "Good" shops that I haven't actually blogged about (or visited in more than year) to see what they are really like, at least the ones that make it easy by visiting Isetan. This was one where my complaint was, from visiting in summer, that they didn't actually have any chocolate cakes and the cakes I had gotten I thought were not special. Today's cakes were Sicily and Les Saveurs de Chocolat, for 562 each.

The Sicily is pistachio and raspberry, as a Sicily usually is. In this case, it is pistachio cream. This cake also has hazelnuts. I don't know which nut is the layer of chopped nuts that gives it some crunch, but it is excellent cake. Raspberry jam is an accept. The biscuit part is very dry, which is my preference over spongy.

Les Saveurs de Chocolat means "flavors of chocolate", and it's layers of white, milk, and bitter chocolate. Where Au Bon Vieux Temps' three-layer chocolate mousse is ice cream intense, this is subtle. And it is also excellent and gets my respect.

Also getting my respect is a website that is up to date on the fresh cakes. I'm going to have to make this place "worthy", and I'm close to being ready to make that more quantitative, although even my postings so far have not been that precise about the cakes, which is not surprising because even for a personal evaluation, drawing the line between excellent and great is difficult, much less between good and okay or sometimes okay and bad. I guess "great" is what I'm really please with, excellent I'd like to have again, good I wouldn't go out of my way for, okay I would work to avoid, and bad is obvious.

Rainy day running near Meiji Jingu Gaien: Guayaquil from Jean-Paul Hevin

It's another rainy day, so I got cake first. Well, actually I visited Tokyu Hands first and they had lots of cake pans today, although they were called something different than in my recipe book and none of them were the required size (and few listed their size in centimeters), which is just as well, because I do not have an industrial oven and can't do 30 cm by 40 cm. Still, once I get actual ingredients, I think I'll try to find a small pan for a trial before getting a larger pan. I can do up to 30 by 30 cm with my oven. As far as ingredients, what I need first is egg whites (I'd like to get powered) and hazelnut powder (I've only seen almond). Maybe this weekend I'll get over to Cuoca (not that I can't order online, but I'd like to see their pans, too).

Anyway, for the run, I ran around Meiji Jingu Gaien area. Because I had been trying to do intervals lately, I wondered about doing intervals by distance, since there are 100 m markers there. My easy run (after a 1 km warm-up) was about 40 s, hard was 30 s, and all-out was around 23 or 24 s. Maybe my next thing will be to set a lap speed and see how many laps I can keep it up, but again, it would be easier to do that with a watch that gave me a signal at regular intervals (although I worry about running down the battery quickly). Eventually, I'll care enough to go shopping at a store and see if I can actually try something and see whether it does what I want, which I've only did a little and looked on-line.

I ran about 1 hour, which is not so long, but I kept up a pretty good speed and stopped very little (I avoided standing at stoplights, but just took paths that were available, trying new places).

The cake that I was waiting for was the Guayaquil from Jean-Paul Hévin which was 685 yen (I pointed out that the card said 618 yen, but that did not even get me a freebie, although two people apologized and one person went back to consult someone higher up; butter prices and the weak yen are driving up cake prices everywhere, I've noticed).  The cake is their standard bitter chocolate cake, which is completely great. It's hard to imagine better chocolate cake, but I should acknowledge two things: (i) I had drunk about two glasses of red wine before, so I was feeling pretty positive; (ii) I've had this cake in the past and been disappointed, so you have to watch out for times when it's too humid and hot for this cake; in this case, it went into the refrigerator for a couple hours before I ate it and the temperature is down to below 30 today, although rainy, so not full summer heat, much less the extreme heat that we broke records with this year in Tokyo.

Materiel did not have the same raspberry cake when I went today, so I can't update that post yet.