Pièce Montée, Thé Vert

No running today. Since I planned (and did) my indoor workout, I went to Ginza by bicycle and visited Pièce Montée for a fourth cake. I decided to be more adventurous and get Thé Vert, which is working hard to be Japanese. Besides the green tea, it has a couple beans, and lots of sesame (seems like). The top fell off the base tart, but I could put it back, though the very top might have originally been better centered. Anyway, it was definitely good and had similar texture and sweetness to other cakes. Interesting enough to recommend but not really my thing.

This shop is now tied for top of the quite fine shops and could replace one of shops at the bottom of the exceptional list, but not today.

Meiji Gingu Gaien course: canelé

Just a training/body-testing run today, about 4 km total, 1.2 km of which was 10 km/h interspersed with some 8 km/h, with the final 1.5 km at 9 km/h to Marusho supermarket to get milk for canelé to use the yoke left over from yesterday's experimental cake component, which was just egg white and almond powder (basically, just an almond, unsweetened shortbread, so it was just a base). I suspect that there was an error in the book that left out more sugar that went in with the almond powder.

I include a picture of the canelé I made because these are actually new: I got a regular mold (maybe 60 ml?), so even you bake it until the outside is brown, it's still custard-like in the middle (and you can taste the rum), unlike the mini-canelés. This should tide me over as far as homemade until Friday, when I plan to make carob brownies (tomorrow, I want to run to Ginza for patisserie cake).

I should also mention that I had another chocolate from Henri le Roux that was excellent, this time the Goma (sesame), which is seasonal. Haven't had a bad one yet, though I have avoided the coffee ones and stuck to the dark coated chocolate ones. I'll do milk chocolate before coffee.

Jean-Paul Hévin bar(re) in Marunouchi: Goutte d'Or and Aquitaine

Did a café-ish stop. This is the casual budget version of the chocolate bar in Isetan Salone Men's, which I scoped out last week. It's sort of hidden, Google might help you find it, but it currently doesn't identify Isetan correctly and assuming that you come to the correct block, the signs outside telling you and dozen shops and restaurants inside include neither, because they are only for the ones you can get too after you enter the main interior hall, not the ones that have only their own street entrances. As I read on someone's post and observed yesterday, never became full over the almost hour we hung out there (there aren't really that many customers to justify the Isetan shop, either; maybe it's temporary until the building across the street goes up, though huge skyscrapers take some time, I would imagine).

They have only a small selection of the chocolate drinks and they come in paper cups, but at about half the price (and they have coffee). Also, just a few cakes, but almost all not at the main Isetan. I got one advertised on their web site as an exclusive, the Goutte d'or, which is almond I though I read (the good thing is hollow chocolate with sugar inside), but the website points out star anise and sesame as accents, which I have reason to doubt. The other cake was Aquitaine, which has cheese (and maybe it has almond, since there's some nut on top), which might be a first for me from JPH. These were each 640. Both were excellent. Neither was especially exciting, but they were both interestingly different from other cakes I've had. Besides the different themes, the Goutte d'or was a fairly hard drier cake (not sure were the glare in the middle came from: must be reflecting off the camera)

and the cheese one was soft (sorry, it's upside down; actually, they put both on their sides, though that is reasonable, even if they don't display them that way in the case).

There were a couple other cakes there that I haven't had yet, but there are a couple seasonal ones at Isetan that ' haven't had either. Decisions, decisions.  

Pièce Montée: Thevert

The rain held off mostly, so I could run today. I did 4 km running total at 7 to 8 min/km alternating  2 min running, 1 min walking again, which I'll keep doing through next Tuesday, as my running week. I was a little worried because pain from a little pain from sitting at, but it was okay running (though it generally is, whereas the next day might bring other news). Now, it's my left arm that's the problem. I probably shouldn't be typing with it, but it's not hard to rest it enough.

I finally got back to Pièce Montée, but didn't get a good picture of the cake. It's a long way walking home, so I ate in the park and my lighting was not as good as last time (I started from the other end of the park), but I had already wrecked the box. It's worth seeing though, so the photo is taken from their blog. It's Thevert (for Thé Vert, green tea). I think the "cup" and lid are chocolate, although the sesame seeds mask it, or maybe it is sesame seeds and nuts dilute, since it looks more like nuts than sesame in the picture . There is quite sweet green tea mousse inside, although the green tea flavor is hard to taste. I'm not sure if the beans are real, since there was no bean texture, so maybe just brown mousse. This is a very interesting and good cake, so I don't regret it, but as a second cake and for 1000 yen, I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, so I'm calling it just "good" and taking them off the list of potentially excellent shops, which still has about 35 shops in it, about half only visited a couple time and half bumped down from potentially "great". At some point, I'll sort out the semi-great from just excellent ones, but I'd like more cakes from some of them first. In the meantime, it's been too long since I've had really great cake, so I'll see whether I can get to Pierre Hermé tomorrow night after my other errands. I'll be unusually busy, but there's always Saturday (which I haven't decided where to go yet, although I always need to get back to Paris S'éveille and I'm not up to running that far or fast enough on a weekday or have high enough need to use the bike).

http://piecemontee-blog-new.seesaa.net/upload/detail/image/DSC_0607ver2-thumbnail2.jpg.html

Sadaharu Aoki (Marunouchi): Zen, Cote d'Ivoire

Visited the cafe at Marunouchi today, which was almost empty at 3:30 pm on a rainy Monday. I had wanted to go to the café to get the Millefeuille Vanille, which is not available at Isetan. Instead, we got the Zen (which was supposedly an exclusive, but I've seen posts claiming Midtown sources, which is consistent with the way "exclusive" is used by Tokyo Patisserie) and Cote d'Ivoire, neither of which I expected to be my favorite, but they were both excellent.

The Zen was 891 yen with tax and is dominantly sesame paste, a really thick layer in mine, I think, compared to posts online, who are the source of my ingredient lists, although they were buying from different shops, so maybe the recipe varies, which would be interesting but inconvenient for trying to keep a record of who sells what, under what name, and how it is. Midtown and Paris posters agreed cognac, which I didn't notice (Paris poster claimed it was about triple the amount of a normal cake, basically killing it). Now, there is a green layer, which I assumed had green tea (which agrees with a different poster), though I couldn't say for sure I tasted that. Midtown poster claims chocolate cream, although maybe that was around the dark sesame part, and hazelnut biscuit. As I said, this was excellent, but I'm not convinced that I need a lot of sesame cakes, just like I don't need a lot of chestnut cakes. This is seasonal and was available only in August last year.

The Cote d'Ivoire is available at Isetan, but is a low priority for me because it's coconut, I've fairly sure, although the Sadaharu Aoki diary (in relation to a cooking class on it in 2010) only mentions passion fruit and white chocolate, which I can believe. The coconut is maybe just in the biscuit, and was not enough to kill it for me, but I would have preferred something else. Still, excellent for 780 yen including tax. Also seasonal, but was available June thru August last year.

This was a café, so double those prices to include the fruit tea. The Pomme Caramel is excellent, though. The Douce Fruits was not so exciting.