Frédéric Cassel, Savarin Orange

Sunday, I was right back to Ginza Mitsukoshi, since Frédéric Cassel won the cake-off, and anyway, are top of the shops with new cakes. I went with the Savarin Orange, so no alcohol. Though orange, it has lime juice to make it more tropical. Inside is vanilla cream, but on top is the staple mascarpone cream on top of the orange. They recommend with tea, which works for me. This was excellent, fortunately, and certainly better than the previous savarin I had from their neighbor counter, though it might have had more volume (though at greater price). This restores them to the the current target level, though the target is about to get raised, and they're at the top, so they will probably get another cake this weekend, though 

I'll say ahead of time that I got one cake ahead on Thursday this week, whereas last week I was one behind, so there will be at least one cake less this weekend. 

I should mention that I also got a second pastry from Johan, a Pain au Chocolat, and it was good, but nothing memorable. They used to have a super decadent version that also had pistachio when they had a Shinjuku shop, but I haven't seen it in Ginza.

Rue de Passy, Chocolat Pistache

When they didn't have the great cake I wanted for a cake-off two Saturday's back, not to waste the trip at a time with fewer opportunities to get cake, I choose the Chocolat Pistache, on the reasoning that the other best cake I've had from there was this combination. This was a more traditional cake, though, and was maybe cream rather than ganache, so I should have eaten it at a warmer temperature. Actually, this combination is tricky, as while pistachio can accent chocolate, the latter has a strong taste that doesn't benefit from being diluted or give way to other flavors easily, so I didn't really feel like this harmonized the best, though it was still good.

Happily, I did much better on Sunday for a cake-off, which I failed to photograph, apparently. The cake-off was a third round between two cakes from the double-loser's bracket, between Pistache Chocolat from Coffee Parlor Hilltop and Concert from Lenôtre. I learned from Saturday's mistake and let the Pistache Chocolat sit out for 5 minutes from the refrigerator. It was definitely great and the light pistachio and chocolate taste was harmonizing well, though it still lost to the chocolate simplicity of Concert.

While I was at Ginza Mitsukoshi, visited Johan and got a pastry (which used to be my favor pastry source when they were in Shinjuku). Ig to the Kouign Amann. This seems to be the traditional shape, which is not my favorite, but I felt that I was recognizing it's good points finally, as this was excellent.

Frédéric Cassel: Tarte Exotique

Monday and Tuesday were repetitive, in that I went to Ginza Mitsukoshi two days in a row on the off chance that I could get a super-limited cake. I failed both times, but wasn't really surprised. Still, I had good runs and relieved some stress. Monday I got a Pain au Chocolat from Johan. This was definitely good. It was a little more on the bread side than I'm really looking for, but I don't blame them for that, since they are more a typical bakery, not a pâtisserie.

Tuesday, I decided that it was time to take the next step in overcoming my prejudice against coconut by getting the Tarte Exotique from Frédéric Cassel, despite it even having visit shredded coconut (though it does not seem to be raw, thankfully). This has a cacao biscuit shell with a layer of coconut ganache and milk chocolate-coconut ganache, none of which seem like good ideas to me, though I appreciate a nice solid tart. Fortunately, they know what they are doing more than I know what would be good and everything worked well together to make an actually excellent cake, though that might being giving it credit for difficulty, as well as my bias toward this brand.