Cake-off: Viron's Gateau Chocolat over Éclat des Jours' Tartelette Mûre

Took off Thursday morning and did a run for cake-off cakes, or at least for the first one, Éclat des Jours' Tartelette Mûre. It seemed early when I started, so I took a longer route, but I paused enough and I'm slow enough that I wouldn't have been early if I had taken the shortest route. I decided to take the train back in two stages, stopping at the Marunouchi Viron to get their Gateau Chocolat. They don't have the selection of the Shibuya shop, but they have the basics.

These cakes are great in being top of their class in significant classes: classic baked chocolate cake and a custard and cream fruit tartlet. This time, I have to go with the chocolate, which is simple (in being uniform except for a little powered sugar on top) and delicious. This was a fourth round for two cakes with two wins and one loss, so the chocolate cake will get a round again next year but the tart can sit out a year. One more cake-off planned for this year.  

Cake-off: Éclat des Jours' Tartelette Mûre over Jean-Paul Hévin's Matcha Marron

I got all my weekend cakes in on Saturday, despite the typhoon-induced rain, or maybe because of it. I started off by walking to Éclat des Jours out in Koutou-ku to get Tartelette Mûre for a third-round cake-off and came back by train, stopping at Ginza Mitsukoshi to get Jean-Paul Hévin's Matcha Marron, both one-and-one great cakes.

These are both niche cakes, so hard to compare. In the end, I went with the more distinct, Tartelette Mûre. Matcha Marron is nice and has a distinct combinations of flavors (chestnut, powered green tea, chocolate, and rum) and the great construction of a JPH cake mousse cake, though there are several cakes like that, which I'm thankful full.

Cake-off: Frédéric Cassel's Framboisier over Éclat des Jours' Tartelette Mûre

 Cake-off back on September 10th, I did a second-round cake-off between two new-comers: Éclat des Jours' Tartelette Mûre and Frédéric Cassel's Framboisier. In a way, both are these are pretty basic and there were reasons to give the win to either for this tough matchup. On one hand, this is maybe the only great fruit tart, whereas Framboisier is one of three nearly identify FC cakes, differing only in the fruit. But in the end, I really like the pistachio cream that is the main component of the Framboisier, and there is a lot of it, so it gets the win. If this were based on cost performance, though, I'd probably have to give it to the tart.

Cake-off: Éclat des Jours' Tartelette Mûre over Sadaharu Aoki's Tarte Caramel Salé

August 28, was lucky enough to get the same cake in the afternoon as I got the previous morning and did a cake-off with a cake I've been waiting a long time to reappear from Sadaharu Aoki, their caramel tart: Tarte Caramel Salé. However, as in the cake of many early "greats", this one really live up to my hope. It was certainly good, but it didn't give Éclat des Jours' Tartelette Mûre any kind of fight, though it gave me a chance to confirm that I think it is great.

Éclat des Jours, Tartelette Mûre

Thursday Aug 27 (when I took a half-day off), I went out to Éclat des Jours for a new cake. I don't think they had any new regular cakes, so I continued working through their tart lineup, which is relatively large compared to other shops. Hadn't seen a reason for it until this one, but maybe just because I'm nostalgic for blackberries, I found this to be great, perhaps the best fruit tart I've had so far. Of course, great fruit is not enough and I also appreciate the cream (I think there is custard underneath) and the fairly substantial tart base.  

In blogger news, the edit for labels has finally evolved back to something that looks like the original easy-to-use form.