Les Années Folles: Sans Farine

Two weekends ago now, I was working through the quite fine shop list to get 4th cakes and visited Les Années Folles for a new cake. They had various nutty ones and I chose Sans Farine. I managed to photograph the card, so I can report confidently that it had caramelized hazelnuts, royaltine "diplomat", which is maybe a kind of paillete feuilletine (crape flakes), vanilla whipped cream, and orange. Under the (uncredited) chocolate shell is layers of cake and whipped cream, though I can't remember the distribution of ingredient's beyond that at this point. It's a little packaged snack-cake like in design, but I like it and can call it excellent. This shop will make the cut.

Sunday run to Lettre d'Amour [Closed]

Ran just over 14 km, which was a couple kilometers too far (I walked the last kilometer), although the stiffness went away before I had a chance to ice it, so no harm done, I think. You can't find out how far you can go without going to far. I think an approximately 30 km run for next Sunday to get back doing new History and Culture course should wait another weekend. Also, I'll rest from running and cake shops tomorrow. I'm busy the end of next week, so it might be hard to keep the training.

Of the 14 km I did, first there were a very slow 0.63 km in 4'19'' (6.85 min/km) as a loop back home for another layer, a credit card, and a point card. Then I did a moderate-speed 8.26 km in 50'46'' (6.15 min/km) with one early stop to go to Tokyu Hands to check out cake rum and a replacement silicone mat for one that I burned, neither of which I bought; then the basement, where they have a new baking section that will be my new place for buying pecans (smaller cheaper bags, although the nut pieces aren't quite as pretty) but does not do baking alcohol (and the basement alcohol section only had a 700 ml bottle, which I'm not ready for; and also in the basement、Fauchon, where I bought a canelé again (no photo) for 259 yen. The taste was good, but it was too soft for me (says the person who charred the batch yesterday). Speaking of which, I should correct what I wrote about canelé forms, since what I actually have is brioche forms, which I'm not interested unless I'm going to try bostock, which I'm ready for. Lastly, was a very slow 5.19 km in 36'16'' (6.99 km/min) before just walking the last kilometer.

Weekly (Mon to Sun) stats then stand as 26 km very slow and 8 km moderately paced. There's a holiday the coming Thursday, but I'm busy from then to Saturday, so I'm not sure how much running I can get in besides Tuesday, Sunday, and probably Wednesday, although Saturday night I could do a little. I should be able to make 40 km, with at least 20 km slow or faster.

At Lettre d'Amour, I got a croissant for 220 yen and Praliné Opéra for 520 yen. The croissant (no photo) was nothing special, I decided. The cake, which was marked "NEW", was excellent, but very sugary. As one would expect, it is hazelnut biscuit, praline butter cream with chocolate ganache layered and accented with caramelize nuts. When talking about yesterday's cake from Aigre-Douce and labeling it "great" only because I couldn't think of any way to improve it without making it into a different cake, this might be the cake I was imagining. And yet, it was not great to me, so I'm going to stop treating Lettre d'Amour as a "Great" shop, but I don't doubt that when the "Worthy" group gets thoroughly reviewed, this shop will end up in whatever category is below what now I'm calling great, along with Ryoco and others that I started in the great category but later demoted.
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Hike to Kneten: Schokoladenkuchen

Feel fine today, so I'm ready to do a long run (not today) when I get some time, but it sort of destroys the day, so I feel like I should do some other things.

Today is rain, so I hiked there, like in the old days before I could run in Tokyo. It's about 5 km there, but I didn't take the shortest route, especially coming back, so it was about 12 km total. Got the Schokoladenkuchen (chocolate cake) for the quite reasonable 430 yen. It seems to be chocolate whipped cream between layers of fairly light cake (if it were heavier, it couldn't be held up by cream). I prefer something heavier, but this was definitely good for chocolate cake of this type; I've had experience with bad ones, so I appreciated this, although after one-third, I would have been happy to stop and move on to something else, although not because the flavor overstays its welcome, just it's no so much my thing. My favorite part was caramelized hazelnuts on top. If you put the chocolate in the cake and doubled the density and between put layers of crushed caramelized hazelnuts with just enough whited cream to keep them in place, that would definitely bring me back. Otherwise, the early hours (7:30 to 19:00) mean that I would maybe consider visiting again for something else on another rainy morning. Sorry, I should have moved the fork and focused better on the cake, to get the auto-focus working better.

Takagi: Fontainebleau

Today is a day to make excuses about running/shame myself, which is one purpose of this blog. The excuse is that I did 21 km yesterday, which is two day's running. Still, I wanted to do strength training that I can rest afterward from so I'm still ready for 40+ km Saturday morning. My running was 1 min/1 min intervals and I tried to run as fast as possible (as embarrassingly slow as that is, I still run out of air and I'm not that sore), I did not take the shortest possible route to Takagi in Aoyama, but it was close enough that I only had time for 6 intervals, because it's really close. Then I ran back with my cake, and that was it. I tried working out in my room, but I was really tired and hungry, and only got a third of the way through my normal routine. I'll try running to Ginza/Shinbashi tomorrow and doing a better inside workout Friday. I really need to get some dumbbells, but apparently the nearest Biccamera with them is Akasaka, which is okay if I go by bike on Sunday, I guess.

From Takagi, I got Fontainebleau (my spelling), which is almond and hazelnut praline around caramelized nuts with a layer of chocolate. It's a seasonal cake, so perhaps this is what got me thinking this place was great back when I started seriously looking around for nearby places to run to get cake, since this seems designed to appeal to me. It was 562 yen, which is not too bad these days of the weak yen. The cake is very good, is well-balanced, and was not something that I got tired of. No reason to call it great, though, so I think I'm going to have to downgrade my evaluation of Takagi. Still, very convenient and has good cake. And they give me little chocolate/nut something for free fairly often, as a kind of appetizer, I think. It's always the same, though, so I have to watch out or I'll get tired of them when they give me two. I should freeze them and save them for sharing, but I'm too greedy for that so far.