Sunday: Viron again

From last time, I decided that Viron is actually great. (And reviewing, Ryoco is not great, but still worthy of special attention.). On the grounds I want to give equal attention to the great shops, I'm trying to catch up with Viron, although, because they are more a bread than a cake place, I'm likely to run out of things faster than some places.

Today was their Mille-feuille, for 700 yen, which was great. This is a regular mille-feuille, but it has icing, which many here don't. The other parts are also excellent, but the icing puts it into the great category. And it traveled pretty well by bicycle basket (it was well packed). Also got some great rye bread (Seigle).

Continuing my baking, today was pecan pasties, which is a different recipe from yesterday's pecan pie tarts. The pasties are easier and my first impression is that they are more delicious, but the next test is comparing them defrosted, since most of them aren't going to getting eaten fresh-baked. Note, that the recipe actually says to chop the pecans, but I could not see the advantage: I don't mix them with rest of the filling, I distribute them evenly into the shells and then add the rest of the fill on top. Of course, a lot of dripping is involved.

Ginza run to Dalloyau: Douceur de Peche

Today was a normal run to Ginza. Still not so many people along the moat run portion, so maybe people are on vacation in August. This time I got the Douceur de Peche, which is complex. There is shortbread as a base, fromage blanc mousse and peach slice gel around it. There is also a lemon flavored biscuit underneath everything, and vanilla icing on the outside. The outer layer was a little more gel than I like, but for the season, I did not have trouble with it. Great cake from a great shop, so I keep going back. But why the raspberry on top? Seems designed to throw you off.

9 km to Neues and Tokyo Midtown: Esterhazy Schnitten

I guess today's run was a little short, but still plenty hot. I stopped at Neues and got the Esterhazy Schnitten for 500 yen. Very good (but again, not on the on-line menu). The frosting was frosting sweet, so it would have been better with a drink, but this was in the middle of a run, so I didn't want to stop that long. Love this cafe, though. This is a kind of standard German (well, Hungarian) tort with spiced buttercream sandwiched between almond meringue dough (at least traditionally: this was a nutty cake, but not sure that it was meringue).

I stopped at Midtown to visit their nice grocery because I was interested in caramels for melting and topping my cheese pie with. I talked about caramel here previously but had not realized that the flavor I know as caramel is actually milk caramel ("caramels", as in the candy), or maybe caramel sauce, but full on caramel cooks all the water out, so that's probably why sometimes when I order caramel things they taste funny to me, because I'm only used the taste of sweetened caramelized milk. Found the same brand of milk caramels at Midtown as elsewhere for cheaper, so I went ahead and bought them. Don't know whether I'll have time today to experiment, but I'm thawing a pie.