Frédéric Cassel, Saint Honoré Vanille et Goyave

Sunday evening I finally did my running for the weekend, but only to Ginza Mitsukoshi (I walked back). I was willing to be disappointed late on a Sunday but they had what I was looking for, the new cake from Frédéric Cassel, Saint Honoré Vanille et Goyave. Saint honoré were a standard for a while, but it's been 3 years since I've had one from there. Fortunately, they still know how to make excellent ones. 

This brings the net cakes up to 64, which is a nice round number, so it might be a while before I get back to them as I proceed through the list of exceptional, quite fine, and fine shops to bring them up to 8, 4, and 2 net cakes, respectively. Should take a couple years, but I'll probably not wait that long, even without cake-off wins.

Jean-Paul Hévin, Verrine Lavande & Verrine Banane Griotte

Sunday afternoon, as brunch dessert, we got cake for two from Jean-Paul Hévin: Verrine Lavande & Verrine Banane Griotte, the new new items. The first is white chocolate, lavender, and grapefruit, and the second is Dominican chocolate, banana sauce, and cherry. Neither are really my ideal flavors. The verrine Lavande was good, but pretty mind, though you wouldn't really want intense grapefruit or lavender, I would think, so this was as designed and offered a variation over the other cake, which is sweet, and the verrine not ordered, which is coffee and presumably bitter. Despite continued reservations about banana, this was excellent. I have to acknowledge that it's not the fruit, but how it's used that's important. This at least catches me up with JPH's last cake-off wins.