Au Bon Vieux Temps: Mont-Blanc

As usual, I'm behind on most things, such as answering mail and messages. Sunday, I went cycling for about 3 hours. As reward for winning a cake-off, I got a new cake from Au Bon Vieux Temps, Mont-Blanc, not that it's likely new to them. Unfortunately, for the cake, it had a long trip by bicycle after that, so it was plastered up against the side of the box by the time I got to it. I scraped it off as best I could, but imagine it symmetric to begin with, but still small. It was a pretty basic Mont-Blanc, being a cream surrounded by a relatively thin layer of mind chestnut paste on a forgettable meringue base. It was basically good but pretty far from what I want in cake. I more positive news, The cake I want for the next 1st-round cake-off was still available, at least as of last Sunday, so I'm going to go for Afternoon.

Monday, I tried to get the new cake appearing today at Jean-Paul Hévin but I was pretty late, so it seemed to be sold out (lots of other cakes still there after 7, though. I'll try again tomorrow. Instead, I got a Croissant from Andersen. I've had their Croissant before and knew to expect something good but not great. What I really wanted to do was see whether heating it up in the oven a little would be okay, since, in this weather, I've had experiences with pasties that I regretted eating cold. 2.5 min at 100 degC seemed fine. The outside flake wasn't very stable to begin with (it perhaps did not have the most gentle return home, since I had other shopping to do and my normal bag to carry) but wasn't harmed by the over. The running Monday was just over 65 minutes down to the Kirakawachou-Kioichou Loop, where I turned too early going north, and then back along the Akasaka North Loop, where I missed one turn. However, I discovered a crosswalk that I had not noticed before connecting to the Akasaka West Loop and making it possible to have one big loop from Akasaka down through the north edge of Roppongi rather than long links that I have to return by. The 60-kilometer run is going to wait until I can sort it out.