Ladurée: Fleur Noire

Tuesday, still no running, but my feet were much better, maybe 75%. Not perfect, though, and I'm worried about a partial sprain, so not something I want to rush. I did feel free to walk even further for cake (besides the normal daily commuting, which is a few kilometers total). This time, in response to their cake-off win (and because they rank high as a quite good shop even under the new system, so I need to see whether they should be promoted to excellent), I went to Lumine at Shinjuku Station and got Fleur Noire from Ladurée. This thing is pretty decadent, with both chocolate and almond icing, dark chocolate mousse, and bourbon vanilla (that is, vanilla from Madagascar) cream in the middle. They're working pretty hard at this one, but it is excellent, so they may be able to make the transition. Got a lot of other shops to sort out after the reorganization, so I'm not sure yet.

DelRey: Pistachio Chocolat

Since they were at Isetan, I wanted to get a third cake from the Quite Good shop DelRey. I got the Pistachio Chocolat (I know, mixed languages). For the run, tried out the latest version of the neighborhood map starting from the Daikyouchou Bridge to the Shinanomachi Stn. Link and all connected parts east, doing everything in reverse, which makes everything look different (like landmarks for turns), so it really feels like a different course. I collapsed some loops and it's down to a little over 9 km, which I did in 60 or 61 minutes, which I think is pretty good, because there are a lot of stairs and hills.

The cake did not start too well with me, because the outside is pistachio mousse which is very gelatinous, which I hate. But it was pretty chilled to begin with and letting it heat up a little really helped. This has a lot of feuillantine in side, to give it crunch and some chocolate mousse, though not a lot. somewhat because I could over come the gelatinous problem and enjoy a strong pistachio flavor, I'll can say that this was excellent cake.

Tout le Monde: Gallia

Today I went down to P. tout le Monde for a first look/cake. It's a nice little shop near Musashi-Koyama on the Meguro Line, in Shinagawa. This was a day time run, which is necessary because they close at 19:00 and aren't that close to me (it's about a 9 to 10 km run, depending on how direct a route I try to do; in this case, less so on the way there). The run was fine, though I'm still slow compared to winter, being around 9 km/h around trip for 19 km.

I chose the chocolate cake, Gallia. This is sort of an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink kind of cake, as the base is maybe a chocolate feuillantine, above which is Japanais (hazelnut biscuit), chocolate whipped cream, cream, mousse, and ganache layers, and a couple kinds of chocolate covered nuts, as well as just some loose pieces. It was all good, and works good together. The chocolate itself was maybe nothing special but it was also not bad. Definitely a good cake. I cake on the terrace. No drinks service (which I didn't really want, but free water would have been nice), but I got a complementary financier, which is a pretty good score, though I'm not sure how good it is, because I'm saving it to share.

Jean-Paul Hévin: Éclair Praliné

Today I got around to a new cake at my favorite shop, Jean-Paul Hévin. Today's limited-time dessert (until at least June 30) was Éclair Praliné. Like yesterday's choux dessert, I was not having any problem this this kind of crust. Actually, this might be the best éclair I've ever had, though that's still among a fairly limited set, but it is enough that I can call it great, which means two great cakes since the last cake-off. I definitely need to step things up, but fortunately tomorrow is Saturday and I already have a plan (and a prior cake-less run) that seems fairly likely to successful about matching a couple orange-related cakes.

Yesterday's run was somewhat reasonable, though it's been a pretty hard running week, plus tomorrow I've have a big daytime run, so today's run was only 7.5 km at the usual speed, 9 km/h. I went around to Toshi Yoroizuka again, and this time they were open, but I did not see anything new. I suppose I need to swing by during the day some time, if I really want to check their current full selection, preferably the Kyobashi store.

Limevert: Pruneau

For my long run of the week, I went over to Limevert again, taking a longer path of going south to the middle of Aoyama Cemetary before heading west to Roppongi Ave and then over to my usual route down to Old Oyamate Ave. (though I took the southern branch for some reason) and then down to follow Meguro River northwest and then the green path to Umegaoka, and from there along the train line.

I ate in again (obviously) and got chocolate again, this time Pruneau (580 yen) according to the French, but the Japanese name seems to be phonetic for "Brick" (though wrote down "Buritta": hard to write those cards). This is a couple solid chocolate sticks on top, then cocoa powder, chocolate mousse, chocolate cream, a little unlisted chocolate sponge (probably for cohesion), chocolate ganache, and finally a feuillantine base for crunch. I'm not completely confident, but I'm going to say it was great and look forward to testing that in the future.

From there, I went back a different route so I could stop by at Fraoula because I had overlooked that theirs was the first cake I rated here as great, so I should have started with them (I was greedy back then and had two great cakes on that day). Unfortunately, though they were happy to see me again, it seems to be something that they make on an irregular schedule. They offered to give me a call when they made it next, but my schedule is a little more complicated than that and I don't mind stopping in occasionally. I bought there Croissant d'Almonde, which was great. It is the soft kind, maybe with almond syrup, but the powered sugar definitely was part of the appeal for me. More than for cakes, this is a quite excellent place for the few pastry they make, so I need to get there more often just for that, though I'm not sure whether I've missed anything at this point.

Jean-Paul Hévin (Marunouchi): Guérande,

I'm behind, so this is on Tuesday. I had a busy schedule of running planned, though it required modification and the cake side was mixed, like last time.

First, I had to stop by a local shrine and get rid of a worn out charm (or so I was told). Then it was off to the Isetan Men's Salone, which has a Jean-Paul Hévin chocolate "café". I was looking for new cakes, but the reason I was expecting there might be something was that Valentine's Day is coming up and they had multiple special cakes for Christmas, but they said they we're not doing anything special for cake for this holiday. However, they had Guérande (グランド; 583 yen), which I hadn't had, so I sat down and had it. What I was told was that there was salt and also crepe, giving it crunch, both true, I think. At the same time, I was readying the card and only got to chiboust, which I think is just that little line in the middle, since I couldn't see that any of the rest of it was especially egg heavy. It was definitely excellent, I thought as I ate it, but was it really great if I compared it to other chocolate cakes that were great? I thought probably not. However, the problem was I then didn't drink enough water and didn't brush my teeth or even wash my mouth out. So even though it did not seem salty when I ate it, baked crepe tends to stick in the back teeth and I ended up tasting the salt for the rest of the run, which I do not like, though it was not so strong as to make me feel sick (which salt can do to me, if it's like big crystals on a pretzel or chocolate. So be careful careful of the after effects if you have this cake, but most people don't just eat a piece of cake with a little water and then run.

Next task was to go to Dalloyau to see whether they had Opale (or Opalé?), so I could compare it to another cake over the weekend. In fact, no, and it does not have a regular schedule, so I had to scrap my weekend plan and come up with something else to compare a rather unusual cake from Origines Cacao (which may not have that cake, either), thus being behind now. Anyway, the goal was information, so job done. I had been planning to go another two blocks for my cake that day, but since JPH had had something new, that was out, so instead I headed home. However, since I was off plan, I just sort of winged it and went back zig-zagging on a lot of different roads that I usually never use (and now know not too, since they are mainly too crowded with people for the sidewalk width).

In total, I ran about 11 km (I walked in Ginza and coming out as far as Hibiya Park), all at 12 km/h, though on the low side (around 11.7 km/h).
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Jean-Paul Hévin, Marunouchi, Chuo-ku, Guérande, Tokyo cake, running, salt, chiboust, feuillantine, chocolate,

Thursday: Jean-Paul Hévin, Choco Passion

Last day of Golden Week holidays was shopping. Fortunately, we went by the chocolate bar just when we wanted to rest and it was nearly empty. I ordered the Choco Passion cake, which I had completely forgotten I had had until I saw it. Fortunately, it is great for 647 yen. Obviously, it is chocolate cake flavored with passion fruit, but also rum-flavored ganache and feuillantine for crunch. Not sure what the nuts on top are.

I also got the Nectar of the Day which was passion fruit, which was ultimately too sweet. Should have gone for tea.

The other order was Apéro Gourmand "Affogato", which is chocolate ice cream with apricot sauce/nectar for 1,322 yen. Not my thing, but it's good.

Addict au Sucre

No running today, but my walking is basically normal again, unlike yesterday. Cycling (to go food shopping for nuts and oil) feels a little funny, but better than running (I ran a short way to make a light today), so I guess the first step is to get where I can cycle without pain.
I got cake at Isetan today from the visiting shop Addict au Sucre: Paris-Brest Noisette Orange, which is mousseline (Hollandaise sauce plus whipped cream) with orange in a feuillantine sandwich, so it is kind of eclair-like, as Paris-Brest always are. It was 561 yen, which seems a little high, but it was definitely good, though I'm not ready to go beyond that.

Laps and Sadaharu Aoki Chocolat Pralin

Tried to do 7'/lap for 10 laps and failed from the start. I'm sore and just didn't have the will to push myself that hard for that long. I did make 10 laps within 7'15''/lap, but by less than 10 s total, so not that impressive. I knew I wasn't pushing as hard because I wasn't puffing as hard or burning as hard, but my back was not happy so I decided that I was going fast enough. I need to add regular back stretches. I've done 8 laps at 7'/lap previously (as part of 9 laps), so I need 9 laps at that pace to show improvement. I'll try that next or move over to seeing what how I can do with 2 laps around Akasaka Palace.

Cake was Chocolat Pralin from Sadakaru Aoki by way of Isetan for 780 yen. Pricy, but didn't buy cake yesterday (I made cake, and had some today and decided that the evaporated milk recipe is not worse than the cream recipe, and cheaper, mainly because I use less evaporated milk, though it's harder to find). According to the online description, the cake has some orange biscuit, which I didn't notice, but no mention of chocolate dacquoise. It definitely has chocolate cream and cream praline. It has feuillantine (?), which I assume is almond based, but seems accurate from the texture. Anyway, it all goes together and is chocolaty and praline without being overpowered by that. I thought that this was one that I had been indifferent to when I did the sampler set at Tokyo Midtown, but no disappointment today.