Showing posts with label Valencia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Valencia. Show all posts

Sunday, May 31, 2020

P. Mont Plus: 4 cakes

Sunday, I went to one of the few shops with eat-in open, Mont Plus, a shop with some history, I think. For eat in, we got two cakes: Optomiste and Chiboust Paysanne. Naturally, I choose the chiboust. It was a standard (sauteed) apple chiboust with chiboust cream and sour cream, and was excellent. 

The other was also very nice, with caramelized butter cream and walnuts in a rum raisin cake. I'm calling the Optomiste semi-excellent, at least for my companion. 



These were good enough to get two more for take out, which is more important than my vague memory. Neither was chosen by me. One was Valencia. This is a (soft?) meringue cake with almond, orange mousse, and orange pieces. I recall it being
quite nice, so I'm also putting it down as semi-excellent. 

And the last one was an Ali-Baba, which I'll also say was semi-excellent, because it was at least that, but I should probably have both these again and update the entry. I guess I need to visit Kobe more and speed up my updates.

Blogger has updated, and now trying to edit labels destroys the file, so no labels. I'm try to update them later when I figure out how to get the old interface.

 

Saturday, May 12, 2018

Cake-off: Frédéric Cassel's Tan Gram over Sadaharu Aoki's Valencia

My health seemed reasonably good, so I ran to Ginza and got Tan Gram from Frédéric Cassel as a match for Sadaharu Aoki's Valencia, which is a seasonal cake available now for my second-round cake-off of first-round winners. It might not best match, since Valencia is a little subtle as far as the orange in this otherwise standard Sadaharu Aoki cake, whereas chocolate is not so subtle. This time, though it was excellent, I wasn't feeling the great from Valencia, so I'll have to evaluate it carefully next year.

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Cake-off: Sadaharu Aoki's "Valencia" over Paris S'éveille's "Fig Orange"

Had a medium run of 21 km visited various shops to see first hand what their June selection is. The main block (more than 12 km) was just getting to Limevert, for which I won't again demonstrated to myself that I shouldn't try to follow Google's route, because all the streets around Umegaoka are just too random. That was 9 km/h, although the remaining part seemed to be 10 km/h (guess the sports drink was more effective than I expected). Trying a back way between Ryoura and Bigarreaux, though you can't tell well from the picture, there is a reasonably large garden tucked inside this residential area. I went by a block-sized orchard as well (400 yen per 1 km, the sign said, I think, but not sure for what), but that was probably on the other (northwest) side of Ryoura.
Following south from Bigarreaux, the road briefly becomes quite nice, though that is not that surprising for the neighborhood, which is relative upscale. The run ended at Paris S'éveille, where I procured Fig Orange for my cake-off and then took the train to Isetan to get Valencia from Sadaharu Aoki. The Fig Orange is a pretty solid cake, so it probably could have survived further running, but as I've complained before, I've been over doing it this week, so I stuck to the plan of not running that part. Tomorrow I may do 42 km by bicycle, without buying cake to prepare for the next cake-off (as early as Tuesday). 
Unfortunately, I was not feeling the greatness of the Fig Orange. It's heavy on the fig, which is fine in general, and just plain heavy, which I guess I was just not as into as the previous time. The Valencia is the orange version of their standard layered cake with cream, chocolate, nuts, ..., and the formula works and is still great, as far as I can tell, so they take this match-up.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Sadaharu Aoki: Valencia and laps

Yesterday I worked out inside and didn't get cake because I planned to get something expensive today, which I did: the Valencia from Sadaharu Aoki (Isetan, Shinjuku) for 840 yen.

Today, running was laps around Meiji Jingu Gaien again, with the goal being 7 laps within 7'45'' per lap. Due to shoelace problems, there was an extra half-lap not timed, in addition to the normal warm-up running to get to the course. Numbers were 50'45'' total, with laps 7'28'', 7'07'' (actually, the first lap time was long and and the second was short due to button-pushing problems in the dark while running), 7'33'', 7'27'', 7'19'', 7'11'', and 6'41''. Next I'll try 8 laps within 7'30'' each, which means I'll have to pick up the pace on that third lap, although my average was under 7'15'' this time at least, so probably I'll be okay still. 

The cake was great. This is a "strange marriage of orange mousse and feuillantine praline". Well, it's not so strange, but it is delicious, though not a strong taste, which is a good thing. Sweet but not too sweet. The feuillantine is nice and crunchy and the base biscuit is also very good. The cake is probably large for this style of fancy French cakes compared to some cheaper shops. I don't imagine that they are willing to compromise on the size or ingredients, despite price rises that are hitting everyone.