Frédéric Cassel, Fleur de Shuro

Catching up for the week, Wednesday, I got out to Ginza Mitsukoshi for a new cake from Frédéric Cassel. There were three choices, and I went for the one most against my preference, just because it was most different and FC is good at overcoming my prejudices. I got the Fleur de Shuro, or that's that I think it was, where shuro is the name of a genus of Asian palms, which doesn't really make sense in context. This is a good solid almond biscuit, which is really important for balance and texture against all the soft parts. Obviously, it's a gelatin dome, though the inside isn't so gelatinous.  There's streusel in there, obviously not dry, cherry compote, cherry mousse, and cherry cream (cherries are Western and Eastern), and elderflower is the other flavor, which I hope was inside, as I didn't eat the decoration (I've been burned in the past). On the edge of my comfortable zone, and yet it all works together, as a different kind of cake, to give an excellent result.

No running, just bicycling to Mitsukoshi and doing muscle training inside, which I've managed to do every weekday so far. Thursday I didn't get patisserie cake, but I did managed to run 45 minutes as well as 15 minutes muscle training (squats, curls, and shoulder and back exercises).

Del'Immo, Othello

Wednesday, I ran down to Tokyo Midtown, looking for a cake at Sadaharu Aoki, and then continued looking by running to Marunouchi, a route I'm getting used to. Failed both times, so I went to the Del'Immo at the new Tokyo Midtown Hibiya and got the "Chef recommended" Othello, which is a chocolate mousse cake with crème brûlée flavored with vanilla, which is a pretty standard cake design that usually is quite disappointing, but this also included a layer of cinnamon streusel. This was definitely excellent. I'm still not that excited by the main cake design, but I wouldn't be surprised in someone rated this great.

As a result, Del'Immo get's promoted from the quite good to excellent shop category, where I had three openings, so I don't have to bump any of the underachievers yet.

Libertable: Laitir

Finally got back to Libertable, which is an excellent shop that might be quite excellent, but so I need more information. This was only the sixth cake, I think. I went by the neighborhood route and finally finished a one-way neighborhood revisiting of the Kita-Aoyama--Jinguumae--Shibuya loop and the (central) Shibuya loop. It takes about 40 minutes by the shortest route on the neighborhood course to get to the south end of Shibuya station, from which I can cross into parts south. So actually I went to the ShinQ counter of Libertable, but it worked out and they had another cake that haven't had yet (Grace) so it's reasonable to go back there again, but I'll hit the Akasaka main store if that doesn't work sometime (there are a couple shops at ShinQ I'd hit for pastries as backup.

The cake is Laitir, which is baked cheesecake with epoisses cheese and cream cheese with marc cream and marc gelatin and streusel on top (soft of a reverse crust). This is the cheesiest-flavored cheesecake that I've ever had, I think, and is a pretty substantial ball of cheese, if obviously tricky to know how to approach it (radially, cutting between streusel and marc gelatin cubes). It's not my new favorite cheesecake, but it is definitely excellent and certainly recommended to anyone who likes cheesecake. Looks like more visits to Libertable are in my future.