Cycling to Paris S'éveille

Thought I needed some exercise, so I took a trip down to the hardest to reach definitely great cake shop (knock on wood), but forgot to bring their card with the list of things I've posted on. I almost gave up and went to one of the four recommended but unvisited places out that way (although, only one of those was on my portable map, and one was misplaced on my Google map).

I was fairly sure that I had never had Tarte Pomme Yuzu, so I got that for 540 yen. Used my phone camera again, which really is not bright enough for outside (something to think about next time I get a new phone, since it's not bright enough outside all the time). As the name implies, this is a tart with apple and yuzu. It was well constructed and the flavors balanced well, or they would if I liked yuzu more. This was a harder call than yesterday's pistachio and cherry, but I'll still say that this was excellent. I'm not sorry for having had it and would be curious to have it again, but hopefully shared with someone, along with something less citrus sour.

The need for the exercise goes back to having made brownies, using my brioche forms (which I just bought 3 more of). When fresh, I would call these excellent, although the problem is that they don't stay fresh. And they don't say uneaten: I scarfed three of these down last night. I'm already making half a batch, so I'm just gong to have to freeze them and figure out how to defrost them so that they are still excellent. Anyway, I also need to experiment with baking time amount per form (this was half a batch, 100 g sugar and 1 egg worth, in 6 forms). Also, instead of coating in powdered sugar (which is great), I'll try frosting them with cream cheese frosting (or just cream cheese would probably be good).

In the afternoon, I went for a walk through the Shinjuku Station area department stores looking for something like what was in this wrapper, namely, dark chocolate with nibs. No luck. Actually, I don't know where to search for good chocolate in Tokyo. Tried to stop at &Market coming back from Jiyugaoka today, and found that they had ended their relationship with Bonnat (although their store front sign is still has them as a kind of subtitle to &Market). This particular by Mobar was 500 yen, which seemed really expensive in Indonesia to the buyer. If I google Monggo, besides their website, I find posts of people saying why is this so expensive in Indonesia, though not about this particular variety. To me, this was great, enough that I was searching (although not enough to stand in line to get inside Jean-Paul Hévin in Iseitan).

Finally, Kouign Amann from Fauchon. Usually, I would go to Shinjuku Takashimiya (which is actually in Shibuya-ku), but I picked this up in Keio. It was okay. In evaluating cake shops, it's hard to know whether to call this cake or bread, but I guess I should keep it as bread and evaluate shops based on their fresh cakes.