Aigre-Douce: Meringue Gourmandise

As promised, I did another run to Aigre-Douce in response to their cake's win in a cake-off. I took a pretty long path, feeling the need to get some more exercise to burn off eating too many homemade canelé yesterday (they had stuck to the mold and tore, though I'm not sure whether that means that there was too much butter or not enough, but I plan to bake them longer next time), and also getting lost at one point, though I didn't go any further out of my way west than I had intended from the beginning).

I choose cake poorly again. This time it was Meringue Gourmandise. Merginue sounded good, or at least different, although it was just plain baked meringue of the crispy-all-the-way-through type, which I'm not against but not sure was the right choice for this shape of cake. Sandwiched between two pieces was custard and caramel cream, which is what is visible. The problem is the type of caramel, which is not sweet and is used in what the Japanese call Purin (pudding) and apparently other people call crème caramel (not sure why) or just caramel pudding. I don't like pudding at all, though the only other America who's commented about it to me said that they thought it was a great thing about Japan, it being ubiquitous. According to wikipedia, it used to be ubiquitous in Europe, but apparently they got over that. Hopefully Japan is moving in the same direction, but not fast enough. Actually, until I got toward the end of this cake, it was good enough, but then the "pudding" flavor took over, so maybe it's really the interaction between the pudding or caramel, or maybe it's just time, since one bad characteristic is that the flavor I dislike stays as an aftertaste (a touch of coffee will do that too), which the meringue probably did not help with. I shouldn't be surprised, given my track record with Aigre-Douce. Maybe next year.