L'Abricotier, Montelimar

Montelimar from L'Abricotier

For the final, 10th day of GW, I choose one holiday-only shop and decided that, under the new shop ranking system, L'Abricotier was by far under-visited as a quite excellent shop with 4 cake-off wins so far. They had a new cake, Montelimar, which is a honey mousse with dried fruit and hazelnuts on top of a hazelnut and Japanese apricot tart. This combination of fruit and nuts is common to many of their cakes, especially my favorite ones from them. I wondering whether there are other nuts in, since some seemed green, suggesting pistachio, and the combination gave a taste that made me think of butter pecan.

Cross-sectional view

I didn't ask, since another customer had come in, but there is a center custard-like disk, but I couldn't distinguish the taste. This cake was great, unlike others I have. I'll match it against Paris-Brest in the next cake-off I think, which is also hazelnuts, but praliné, so completely different from the raw fruity nuts of today's cake, in keeping with the contrast between the trendy modern foreign Machalak and the neighborhood shop L'Abricotier. Less of a ride today. I'll probably rest from even bicycling tomorrow, which I was thinking would be easy because all my cakes during the week will be from Isetan, since I only have two more cakes this week and might eschew pastries (and definitely bread) for reasons of weight control under my current reduced level of activity. I was hoping for a new cake from Sadaharu Aoki, since they are are finishing their main seasonal cakes today, but I'm now thinking that the chance of something totally new is small, and it has not been that long since I had cake from Machalak, so I'm not sure what I was going to get from Isetan. At least I'll visit them to see what the situation is. Maybe I'll finally get to P. Très Calme or Jun Honma again this week, assuming that they aren't taking the week off.