P. Maison Douce: Trevi (?)

Got my cake from Isetan. This week (starting yesterday) P. Maison Douce is visiting from way out in Hachioji City, which is perhaps farther away than I've ever gone for cake, even when I could run 50+ km. The rain mostly held off today and I ran around Meiji Gaien. I'm down to just walking the first 0.3 km and then I ran somewhat slowly to the track and around the starting marker. Then  and did one full lap (1.325 km) at 8 km/h. The second full lap, I did 200 m each at 7, 9, 8, 7, 9, and 8 km/h, with the 8 km/h sort of high stepping, so it might have actually been the greatest work out. Then I ran to Lawson 100 for shopping, ending up not much under 8 km/h, even with a hill) and walked back. Overall, I had about 1 km walking, 2 km at 7 km/h, 3.5 km at 8 km/h, and of course 0.4 km at 9 km/h, which was a new speed to try and seems okay for my body. My weighted median speed is staying just barely in the 7 km/h category, but it's almost at 8 km/h, where I'm doing most of the running now. I'll keep decreasing the walking, but round trip to Ginza is still farther than I'm ready to do just running. I did max about 6 km this week, so I'll try maybe 8 km next week. Tomorrow, though I'll probably take off so I've got some budget for the weekend. I want to cycle back to Au Bon Vieux Temp and was going to go to Port Bonheur, but I might just got back to Isetan for Maison Douce cake and run locally again. Port Bonheur is accessible on weekdays (I've read), so no hurry. And it's about 8 km round trip.

The cake is maybe Trevi (phonetically, it is To-re-vi), which seems Italian. "Tres Vie" would be two French words, but wouldn't make any sense. It was only 440 yen before tax, I think, so quite reasonable. This time, I did look carefully at the cakes before selecting, but this was marked "Specialty" and "Award winner", so it was an easy choice. It is milk chocolate mousse flavored with orange, with some chocolate sponge inside, so it doesn't collapse, and a base of fairly large nut pieces, I think almond. This was great cake, so I do need to get back there before they become out of reach again.

Viron: Tendresse

Ran to Viron in Marunouchi. As planned, I ran faster (around 7.6 km/h for 6.1 km) and started running earlier, but still walked back (no rain this time, so just had to stop for lights and cake). They had a couple cakes I hadn't seen before and I got Tendresse for 702 yen. This is sort of a chocolate mousse dome, although not that much. More of it was Bavarian cream. I don't recall whether the outer layer of chocolate mousse or the Bavarian cream that has it, but there is passion fruit, which harmonized well. The outer layer of chocolate (?) was a little gummy, but it is still pretty hot (high 30 degC today) and I haven't gotten to dome cakes, because I'm working on nut-based biscuits. The bottom is feuillantine praliné, which is classy compared to a sponge base, so that balances it out and I have no hesitation saying that this is excellent.

Dalloyau: Tarte a la Myrtille

Walked and ran to Ginza, this time by the long preferred way, so the total trip was almost 12 km. Walked down to Meiji Gaien track and then ran, apparently really slowly (6 km/h) at least on average with the hill past Akasakamitsuke, until the rain made me pull out my umbrella and I walked to and along the Moat course to the Sakuradamon Station entrance and then ran again, this time 7 km/h average, to Dalloyau (this time I took a picture from the front entrance),



where I got Tarte a la Myrtille for 594 yen, I think. Sorry, it's facing backward, but I didn't trust myself to get it turned around without wrecking it.

Went to the park by the overpass rather than wait for Hibiya Park. It's better lit, but someone lit up a cigarette near me just after I finished my cake, so the location has it's good and bad points. The blueberry tart was, I'll say generously, excellent. This is a solid butter tart (I imagine) base. The nice thing about blueberries is that they are not overpowering. I haven't had the strawberry one yet, and I'm worried that might be too much strawberry for me. I would have gotten the regular Mont-Blanc maybe, but it was sold out (though they had the pricier seasonal one with Wakayama chestnuts that I posted about before).

Coming back, even though I was not sure of my distances, I knew I was going slow, so I worked in a little more running (1.5 km), again averaging 7 km/h (no steep hills), before walking the rest of the way home. It's good to expand my running distance, but I'd like to at least do it at a faster speed than my walking, so I'll try to step it up tomorrow night.

Origines Cacao: Bacchus

As planned, I did not run this weekend. Instead, I baked a new cake recipe that I had been collecting ingredients for and did my first cycling for a long time. My knee seems to be okay for it.

The ride was out to Jiyugaoka to Origines Cacao to check whether they are "near-great" and ended up being about a 26 km round trip. I timed the first part was doing about 14 km/h, trying to go the equivalent of a walk as far as effort. It gives me a benchmark. Supposedly wind resistance makes speeding up on a bicycle more difficult for running, which I don't know how I'll handle, but I'm treating this as the equivalent of one-fourth the 7 km/h running distance, as far as my budget (I'm rescaling my budget to 7 km/h running from 6 km/h walking, though that information is not so useful to anyone else).

At Origines Cacao, I struggled to find something that looked good that I hadn't had, so I went with the promoted new one, Bacchus, for 594 yen, which is a chocolate cake with cognac and apricot. It's good, being layers of soft sponge with liquor and chocolate frosting, but maybe because chocolate layer cake is too much like what I've had plenty of in the US, it's not really so exciting. Sorry, it was so bright, I couldn't see what I was taking a picture of (and I forgot the shop again, as usual).

This is not the cake I'm looking for, so Origines Cacao goes back in the "excellent" list. That only leaves me five near-greats, whereas I wanted at least doubt the great, of which currently I have four, although if Dalloyau dropped a level, that would work out, so I keep working on the bottom of the near-greats until I get them up to where I want (half the number of cakes of the greats) before I try to update them.

At least the croissant from Au Bon Vieux Temps was excellent. They have delicious looking baked goods, but I don't think I've gotten anything before.

I also got another chocolate from Henri le Roux on Saturday, Madagascar: This was was excellent too.

Learned/got experience with a lot in my last cake attempt, Essor, I think it's called (I don't have the page with the real French name, just the phonetic Japanese). There was nothing that I did well, but I got the general idea about several parts. The result was pretty ugly, so no photos and I ate the evidence.

Essor has two layers of hazelnut biscuit, which was okay, but a little underdone because I used an upside-down tart form on top of a silicon mat because I don't have a 14.4 cm diameter round Flexipan (nor am I able to find out how I could get one, since even the company doesn't list that size, though it would probably would be about 5000 yen, which is more than I want to pay). For the (gelatin) hazelnut Bavarian cream disk, I completely failed to whipped up the cream, and splattered most of it around the kitchen: the new balloon whisk with the new mixer is proving difficult to use. However, it tasted good, and wasn't overly gummy (though would be different with more and proper whipped cream). This time I needed a 12.5 cm Flexipan (also unavailable), so I used a right-side-up one with some plastic wrap, which was a little leaky but worked well enough. The　(gelatin) orange concentrate and liquor layer, whose phonetic French name I can't figure out besides the orange part, really didn't like my substitute for the 12.5 cm Flexipan and broke into pieces when I tried to separate it from the form bottom (also, I had to boil down my first attempt and try again, as the gelatin and concentrate separated during freezing). This was gummy and too strong to sample by itself, but actually was fine in the cake, except for being ugly. Finally, I had to submerge/embed these layers in creme chocolat-blanc d'orange, again with a little gelatin; I tried chilling everything, but still had a splatter problem, so I did it by hand and didn't whip it enough (I don't really know what 6-minute whip looks like). The 15 cm ring form, which I did buy, leaked, but that might be due to the cream being too thin. It formed a solid cake okay and was good, though I'm not really that interested in cake that tastes that orange, so I won't be trying this again. I still have some orange concentrate, but maybe I'll use it and the liquor for macaron filling. Very educational, though. Now I just need to learn to whip cream, since it's half the next cake, Gateau Fraise.

Échiré Maison du Beurre: Misérable

Went to Marunouchi for a third time trying to see the same new shops, and actually found Échiré Maison du Beurre without a line, though of course mostly sold out late on a Friday. The cake they had was Misérable (which seems like a bizarre name for a cake, but it's apparently a standard French cake), for 756 yen, since no mille-feuille, what was recommended. I didn't really mind.

It was definitely good, being (vanilla?) buttercream between pretty standard almond biscuit, though pretty sweet. Very buttery, so I'm not sure that there actually is vanilla, since the point is to show off the butter, that being their specialty, and it did that.

Felt pretty good about finally getting something new worth having from a new shop on my list/map, but I was too fast going them and am now 1% over budget, having run about 4 km at 8 km/h, faster than I intended, with 6 km of walking. Because I ran a lot during the week and not much last weekend, I've got nothing left for tomorrow, so I'll just have to stay in and work on the next cake, as well as brownies, macarons, and canele (for surplus egg yokes, or I can try making brownies without egg whites). Sunday I may also skip running, since I still won't be able to get far, and instead cycle to Jiyugaoka.

Mont St. Clair: C'est la Vie

Today, I repeated Sunday's experience of not getting cake from the same two unsampled shops (it would have nice for P. le R Cinq to tell me that they were closed holidays rather than just telling me that they were open Monday thru Friday when I stopped by last, but maybe they meant only Mondays thru Fridays, not promising to be open any particular Mondays thru Fridays). Also, the rain continues, so no actual running, just 7.6 km of walking on that particular trip, returning by train with cake-making goods. I don't include a shorter, less-intense but more shopping-intensive trip in the afternoon, which included giving Mont St. Clair at Isetan another chance by buying the C'est la Vie, for 581 yen. Supposedly a specialty, it has pistachio cream inside sandwiching chocolate cream with raspberry. Could only taste a weak raspberry. Everything else seemed to get canceled out, which is not my idea of harmony. It was still okay, but a waste of ingredients. Looks like I won't need to worry about visiting them again.

In baking news, the macaron shells seriously cracked again, which didn't used to be a problem: I'm getting worse, maybe over mixing. I can try shortening the waiting time. I played with baking shorter but using higher heat at the beginning, which I didn't do last time, when I'm not sure what I did, but not that.

Mont St. Clair: Mont St. Clair (Isetan exclusive)

Let's start with the cake: I made a mistake and got the Mont St. Clair from Mont St. Clair, which is an advertised Isetan exclusive this week. It is also coffee buttercream with a layer of coffee gelatin, which is as vile as it sounds (to those who do not like coffee, although the gelatin looked nasty up close even before I tasted it) and 582 yen. It's my mistake, so I can't blame them, but I do not trust them for having more than one cake with coffee in it on display, which makes me doubt that they are the shop for me. Still, I should give them another chance while they are at Isetan, since Jiyugaoka is a tough distance for me right now and I haven't posted anything else on them.

The running was okay. It was relatively crowded at Meiji Gaien with people going faster than me in groups, including sight-limited people running with guides, who I often see there, and no where else. It was raining a little, but not unpleasantly. Walked 1.7 km, ran 4 km, with 1.5 of that at 8 km/s and the rest at 7 km/m, alternating first 100 m and then 200 m and once 300 m, although it was hard not to go too slow or too fast, respectively: I need a bigger difference for real interval training, but I'm still just trying just slowly increase minimum speed running.

In fairness, I should also review my own cake. This is number 4 for my exploration of nut biscuit based cakes, Fraise aux Roses. Actually, the pictured one has been frozen once, the strawberries were frozen to begin with (when I made it), and the butter cream was not that fresh by the time I got around to assembling it, although it did not turn out to be had hard except for using a lot of bowls (I need more mixing bowls).

I don't recommend this cake because the jelly topping, which is delicious and sort of simple, dominates, so you can't really taste the pistachio biscuit (and pistachio powder is triple the cost of almond powder, and pistachio paste is double that), even though it is about twice as thick as it should be. I couldn't really taste the rose from the rose buttercream (which was pretty delicious to begin with and still seemed okay yesterday, when I took this picture) and I substituted cherry liqueur for rose liqueur in the imbibage (syrup for spreading on the cake), because I had a deadline and didn't want to search any more. I make these cakes mostly to learn about the process and the components, so I'm not so disappointed that I'll probably never want to make it again. The next one is even more gelatinous, so I need to get some real cake forms or kludge a really short version using my 14 cm tart forms again.

Also, I've figured out the timing to get my mini-canelé made with the silicone mold nice and brown uniformly without burning the bottoms (tops when baking). Now I have to figure out if that's the way I really like these and try buttering the sides more.  Unlike with the metal brioche forms I was using, no trouble getting these out, but not as chewy on the outside from butter and they have a higher surface-area to volume, so I actually be using more butter rather than less, I think. Of course, I could try beeswax, but I'm not ready to go there yet.