Cycling to Yu Sasage: Le Matine

Tried to run, but wasn't that surprised to find that my left knee was not up to it after yesterday's 43 km run. I'm still surprised I managed 51.5 km for two days last weekend (although that's within my maximum one-day of last year). From here forward, I'll have to consider whether I can do one-day or two-day weekend running, although all the History and Culture course I have coming up require too long a run there and back to allow much for a second day, so I'll try to stick to one-day runs with cycling on the other day (if there is one). There are six more H&C courses left to do, and four are already manageable if I can keep increasing my distance by 10% each time (don't need to the next two except for training, but will need it for the following two). The last two require about 100 km of running, so I won't be surprised if I never manage them (at least without resorting to a bicycle).

Cycled to Yu Sasage again, since I had it down as potentially great. Instead of running through the middle of the Shinjuku Station area (and also along Shinjuku Gyoen, which is crowded with visitors due to cherry blossom viewing season), I left using the road between Shinjku Gyoen and Meiji Shrine, which worked well. Then the issue to explore was whether to cross under Expressway 4 back to the more northern parallel route I've used recently or follow along the expressway. Parts of 4 (really, the road under/around 4, which is raised) are fine, but the parts that are built up around stations can get crowded with people and crowded with buildings that cars pull out from between, so I've concluded that it would definitely be worth a short extra trip north to get off it. There are some southern roads that parallel 4 for a bit, but not as dependably (namely, you can't necessarily cross the main streets when you come to them or you have to make weird turns to stay on course) or long.

At Yu Sasage, I got Le Matine ("The Morning") for 470 yen and took it to a nearby park that was not full of cherry trees, so I could get a bench to sit and eat, as well as take a picture. This is an apple mousse cake. I choose it because it was first in line among things I hadn't had (excluding standard low-priority things, such as mont branc, short cake, baked cheesecake, and cream puffs). Was a little worried at the beginning that this was going to be just good, as the fromage blanc cream that make up the largest part of it is not that interesting by itself, but the green apple taste really went with it, the biscuit base was good, and the macaron, which I ate with the last bite, was a perfect touch. I didn't have any trouble judging that it was definitely excellent. Maybe if I liked apple, or really fruit, more, then I would have thought it was great, but I'm not going to try that hard to be objective. Ultimately, I want to rate cake and cake shops on how much I like the cake. In defense of my phone, the screen on my digital camera (10 years old) was not any better outside. The camera is still easier for transferring the picture to my computer, though. It's disadvantage is it's heavy (for running).

Back to Yu Sasage: since this is three excellent cakes to two great cakes, I'm going to move them from tentatively great to tentatively excellent (although definitely at least excellent), which means it will not longer be a priority to keep going back there. In other Yu Sasage news, they did have a fondant in the store, so maybe it was not just an Isetan thing (it did not say that it was a raspberry fondant, but it still had raspberry on the outside, at least, so it's probably the same). Also, I picked up their card for BéBé de la P. Yu Sasage, which is a branch to the south that, while not closer, would be on a nicer and more familiar route, although their hours are 11:30 to 18:00, which is a little restrictive.

Related in the sense that I would have bought Yu Sasage's if they had a fresh-baked tray out like the last time I was there, I tried making financier-like cakes yesterday using my 7.5 cm, 10-petal, brioche forms. The picture shows what one egg's worth of eggwhite makes (I used two, but ate half, including the most burnt ones: I lowered the temperature but did not reduce cooking time to account for using a confection oven). They're very good, so now I know what to do with egg whites left over from making tart crusts, custard, or whatever. I used almonds ground just to the point that the pieces were starting to stick together as a stage of almond butter. It would be interesting to try with almond powder. The recipe calls for "finely ground almonds" and I've read elsewhere that there are differences in some but not all recipes between using almond flour and the courser almond meal, but baking supply stores here seem to just have almond powder, and I can't tell from pictures how much finer flour is than meal, except that both are finer than what I used, which still had the almond oil in it. Next project is to make brownies substituting some ground almonds for flour, then maybe make both with almond powder instead of my self-ground almost almond butter (need to get back to Cuoca at Nihonbashi, though, which seems to be the best place to by a kilogram of almond powder) before trying madeleine-type cakes, again with the same forms.