Lenôtre, Carré Citron Yuzu

Thursday last, I caught up for the week with a cake from Lenôtre. They got demoted, so they only get cakes from cake-off wins for the foreseeable future, but I saved one of those until now, when there is a new cake. This is Carré Citron Yuzu. It's not so different from the other Carré cakes, but these are nice moist fruity cake (versus cream, mousse, or sauce) cakes that have been excellent so I was interested in this one too. It's definitely nice, and I don't have other cakes like these from other shops, so I don't mind saying that this one was excellent too.

En Vedette, Tarte Pamplemousse

After a disappointing coffee shop cake after a long day of running around the north Omote-Sandou Stn. area, I went down to Shibuya to get Tarte Pamplemousse from En Vedette. Grapefruit is a tough sell for me, but I've exhausted the other options at En Vedette. Unfortunately, it remains a hard sell, though I'll allow that it was good.

Ryoura, Marquise

Saturday, as well as the Mont-Blanc for the cake-off, I bought a second cake at Ryoura for efficiency/social distancing's sake, since I expected getting more cakes from Ryoura, a quite exceptional shop, would be the next thing, since I was about to catch up on exceptional shops. However, the demotion of the Mont-Blanc actually meant that Ryoura was at the bottom of the quite exceptional group and likely to get replaced by one of two up-and-comers, so the 19th new cake is maybe several years ahead of its time, or at least I'll have to consider carefully after the next cake-off win whether the reward has already been given, but that's not likely to be until next year until the caramel salt tart finally returns: I'll have to watch for hints online, since I don't expect to get out that way.

Last time I went with a variation of a cake I've had before, so this time I choose something I definitely not had, Marquise, which is white peach flavored and, I was warned, has alcohol. The flavor was nice, but as the shape suggests, this requires a good amount of gelatin to maintain form and the resulting texture didn't agree with me, though I've had similar cakes that were excellent. In this cake, good as the best I'm willing to say, but I can certainly imagine someone else appreciating this cake more, as it is well made.

Viron: Petit Bûche

Christmas Eve, I went to Viron, my highest priority shop (among places with new cakes available), in Shibuya, since that's on the middle three loops (formerly 5 loops) that I'm reconfirming now. I didn't want to do the loop in the middle first or do more than one loop running with cake, so after getting cake (which came, while I was waiting, with a sample of hot wine, a little more than maybe I should have taken, but it served as my snack for this run), I crossed the street and finished off the sleaziest loop, running clockwise the Dougenzaka--Maruyamachou--Shinsenchou loop, which is now part of the Southwest Shibuya Stn. clump, making it almost 15 km long.

The Shibuya Viron shop is open until 22:00, which is why I choose it, because I knew I'd be busy until about  20:00. All they had were Christmas cakes, but they had a couple choices. I looked at what was probably chocolate mousse on the outside and fruit inside and decided that was a dangerous combination (it doesn't take much fruit for a bad balance), and was attracted by hazelnuts and praliné, Petit Bûche. It was very traditional, in it's way. Good but not exciting and the frosting falls off easily, since it's pretty firm and chosen for keeping the log texture.

Au Bon Vieux Temps: Sainte-Maure

This should be short: I did a run down to Au Bon Vieux Temps. Didn't set an alarm and managed to sleep until 8 am, so it seemed a little late, since I wasn't able to get out of the house until a little before 9 am, but I could arrive at 10:30 am, which is actually a pretty good time (before 10 am, some cakes aren't out yet, even though they are open). I choose the Sainte-Maure, because I recognized it as something that had been around for a while, yet I had never tried it. I only got as far as reading that it had cheese before I was busy ordering, paying, and getting my cake arranged. Still not sure that was in it: probably some sort of red fruit, not too strong. The name is the name of the cheese, which probably means its the name of a region. It's goat cheese, which is a first for me with cake, as far as I can remember, and the cake seemed to be a rare cheesecake. Eating it was like eating not wet ice cream (which is a good thing), partially because I chilled it down to zero before eating it, but the same can be said for other of their cakes that are not cheese. Definitely excellent and unique. Not like what usually comes to mind when I think "cake", but I'll definitely be more interested in any other cheese cakes they have, though I've already had their Fromage Cru and it was just good.