Pierre Hermé: Paris-Brest Classique, Carré Blanc, and Cheesecake Céleste

New Year's holidays are almost over, so I should catch up, though there was less cake and running than usual. Monday (Dec 30), I ran to Paris S'éveille, where I expected and found two reasonable cake substitutes. One, however, includes coffee gelatin, which I'm pretty sure would not agree with my mouth or stomach, so I'm going to ignore that. The other was Crème Molle, which seems to be a (custard) crème brulée, so I went with that and ate it in the shop (didn't have to wait). It was excellent, as a change, but I'm recording it as "other", not cake or pastry. Future visits will probably be either for cake-offs or pastries, but I'll watch for the rare new cake, since this is a superb shop.

The next actual cake was New Year's Eve, when I visited Pierre Hermé at Isetan to get new cake because of a recent cake-off win.

I was particularly interested in the Paris-Brest Classique, but it was cake for two, so there were two more cakes that I had half of: Carré Blanc and Cheesecake Céleste.

The Paris-Brest was standard, as expected, with choux pastry and praliné cream. Carré Blanc was very fresh tasting, based on mascarpone cheese with I can't remember what kind of herbs and spices--maybe this had ginger, though I'm also thinking something more herb-like. What I do remember was it was not trying to be subtle about the herbs/spices, nor should it, since mascarpone by itself would be quite blank. The cheesecake followed the featured "fetish", céleste, which is strawberry and rhubarb. All three cakes were good, though none of them stood out, so this shop will probably remain a cake-off only visit going forward, as it will probably have to give up its place in the superb category, where it's already had more than it's share of cakes anyway.