Avranches Guesnay: Opera Figue Vin Rouge

Wednesday, got cake again at Isetan, this time from Avranches Guesnay as a fifth cake from an excellent shop. Did less cycling than other days, due to rain, but still went down to Midtown to check out the day's line up (I suppose I could just ask about the whole week all at once, but that's not very interesting and I perhaps wouldn't remember anyway). I went with Opera Figue Vin Rouge. Fig is good for dense cakes and I used to appreciate it more. This was definitely good and they did have a good harmony between the fig and red wine.

Thursday I went to Il Pleut sur la Seine and confirmed one good cake as available and got the Croissant aux Amandes, again, because I keep forgetting to rate it. This is the kind of almond croissant that seals in the filling by an outside layer. And this almond filling is deliciously moist and quite sugary. I'm going to say that it was excellent. I feel like being a sugar bomb is almost cheating, but it was not poorly done. My night photography, however, needs some work. Look at the phone manual is on the to do list.

Avranches Guesnay: Pistache

Went for a run to Avranches Guesnay and got there with no cash. I decided to tour Jean-Paul Hévin shops, Marunouchi, Mitsukoshi, and Omotesandou Hills, in case any of them had speciall 15th anniversary cakes like at Isetan but was not surprised to find that they did not. What I had not know, though, was that the Motesandou one had moved locations and now has a café space, like all but the Ginza one. Total, I ran about 17 km at around 9 km/h, though a little slow at the end. I went back by bicycle after lunch (, which mostly worked, except the cake flipped in the box and cracked, but didn't leak, fortunately.

If I remember correctly what I read, the outer shell, which is pretty thick, about 1 cm, is white chocolate and pistachio paste with pistachio bits stuck on. Inside, there is a solid lower half and raspberry sauce, which splits out when you cut into the center, but is reasonably thick so that you have some all the way through (assuming that you done each the cake top to bottom; I ate radially). This was definitely good, but I'm feeling in a strict mood these days, so this was not special enough to lift this shop from their current Excellent rating to fill the gap in the Quite Excellent listing.

Avranches Guesnay: Tarte Rhubarbe Fraise

Jogged about half of the long way (to hit a couple Bookoffs, where I bought one cheap sweets making book) to Avranches Guesnay, where I got Tarte Rhubarbe Fraise for 486 yen. I had noticed before the one cake I from Coin Vert was also here, but I noticed today that the Fortissima from Coin Vert is also here, and got a little worried that I was overlapping, that these were really the same cakes. When I got home, I found a blog that pointed out that they were happy to see the rhubarbe tart at Avranches Guesnay after seeing it at Le Coin Vert, so I researched further and found that the Patissier of the former worked at Coin Vert until last year. I'll assume that coworkers have taken over at Coin Vert and even if the recipes are the same, the person actually making them is different. The actual tart was quite good, so I'm going to say it's excellent. It's very pastry like, at least the crumble crust kind, not flaky crust. The topping is very marshmallow-like, which was not what I expected or would choose, but then I can't really say that it's a good season for meringue. It was fine, though, so I won't avoid this topping, though I don't need to seek it out, either.

The running was 1 min walking/1 min jogging again. My initial thought was just 10 repetitions (leaving 10 more Monday or Tuesday) and walk from there, since I did have soreness, although I'm not sure that it's exactly where I was having the most problems before. Things were going fine, though, so I just kept going and did 20 repetitions, which I'll call 2.5 km of running (total walking then was maybe 8 km, not counting the few kilometers walking in the afternoon for shopping), so I made the week's goal of 5 km. I'll see how I am tomorrow to see whether I want to add to the week's total. My priority places are in or near Ginza, so that will be a similar distance, which I can make walking even without running, assuming I don't have to work late.

On the homemade front, I have the usual problem of wanting to bake more than I can process the calories for. Finished off the creme brulée frosting today (I was a little worried about it sitting around too long, since it has egg yoke, but the scalding caramel syrup might might have cooked it enough that it was not a big problem) without making more cake, but I still have an egg yoke left over from yesterday's failed (but edible) macarons, so I'll probably separate another egg and make two yokes' work of canelé and use the egg white for something this week. Or now I'm thinking I should try to use the egg yoke in creme brulée again (which might still be a bad idea because of the egg, this time measuring the syrup temperature so that I'll actually know what I'm doing, even if the instructions seem a little vague: I'm supposed to heat it to 121 deg C, but then am I supposed to hold it there or is it done? That is hot enough to caramelize sugar, so I suppose I'm done, but I'll have to try it and see what happens.

Homemade project 1 and Avranches Guesnay's Renard

Last night, I did some dessert cooking, cheesecake tarts. I choose this next because I had a lot of cream cheese in the freezer, I needed some egg whites for other projects (the crust got me two), and I need some cream for a project. Actually, I realize now, that I need a little egg yoke, so I should have just reduced the recipe and had some creme cheese on bread, but it's too late now. Anyway, I ate the big one.

For professional cake, I bought Renard from Avranches Guesnay for 507 yen. This was this week's recommend cake, so I put off trying their dark chocolate cake again. Renard is a caramel mousse cake with a hazelnut cluster base and an inner layer of dried, at least to the point of being solid, orange, which worked, but was not a major part of the flavor (because it's not that big, just a few millimeters thick). This combination worked for me, although not to the point that I feel a need to seek it out. On the point of caramel, this was somewhat bitter, so not caramel-candy sweet, but not too bitter for me. Basically, the cake was excellent and I enjoyed it, but I'm stilling looking for a great cake from there after too excellent cakes, which is enough to keep my eye on it. First, though, I want to top up my a few of my great shops to 10 cakes, but I'll also get to the backlog of unvisited shops.

Cooking project number two, was to try to make meringue-based cake. It failed again: wasn't stiff enough, but still very edible and the Silpat demonstrated its usefulness. Could double the amount of nuts, though. Not shown is project number three, which was to make rum (because that's the only flavor I have right now: if I get into making chocolates, I'll buy more, smaller bottles, but my interest is still mainly cake) chocolate truffles. I did not manage to get them round, so I'll have to do some research before next time, but the taste seemed okay.

(P.) Avranches Guesnay: Mille-Feuille Vanille

Cycled to (Patisserie) Avranches Guesnay in Bunkyo-ku. I was worried that it would be too crowded an area to park a bicycle, but the shop is between exits for Kasuga, so most of the subway traffic doesn't need to walk past.  

I got the Mille-Feuille Vanille for 605 yen, as this was the only one marked as "recommendation". Being a standard cake, it's hard for it to be great, but on the other hand, it's something that I like, so I'm not likely to rate it low. I struggled between rating it good and excellent, which looking at previously posts on mille-feuille did not much help with except that this was definitely better than Fraoula's good mille-feuille, which was the kind where only flakes are used rather than whole biscuits, making it easy to eat but without a main feature. Since this is a newly visited shop for me, I decided to call the cake excellent, and thus tentatively the shop, and visit them again soon. The picture didn't turn out so great; not sure why it's zoomed in so much.

It was short trip, so I swung through Ginza on the way back and verified where I could park and walked down to Tokyu Plaza Ginza in order to verify that Esquisse Cinq has takeout cake, as reported by Sweet Sonobe. I know the café is really expensive, so I gave up going there unless the cake turns out to be really good (in which case, I could go for my birthday). The takeout is also expensive and limited, but I'll probably still some time. A better choice for me for a café would be Cacao Market by Mariebelle (Hinka Rinka 3rd), which was empty around noon on the holiday.