Back when I was an English teacher, I once tried doing a unit on occupations. The kids learned to ask "What do you want to be?" and to answer "I want to be a teacher, doctor, astronaut," etc. The unit wasn't very successful, though, partly because words like "astronaut" and "veterinarian" are hard to pronounce and remember, but mainly because the kids wanted to be a much wider range of things than was represented on the board-of-education-provided flash cards, especially the girls. If they didn't want to be beauticians or preschool teachers, they wanted to be pastry chefs. That's not too surprising, given the abundance of patisseries in Japan. I go past three on my 15-minute bicycle commute to work each day, and that's not counting the shop that only makes choux a la creme or the Paul bakery in my building. The photo at the top is the "Litchi-Chocolat" from La Pyramide, just up a side street from the Azabu Juban station. It's an unusual combination: the top is an eggy custard mousse, the bottom is a ganache containing fresh lychee halves, and between these layers and at the very bottom are extremely thin pieces of sponge cake soaked in some kind of liquor, probably lychee. On top were a piece of chocolate, half a grape, some coconut, and a cookie, as well as a dusting of cocoa powder. Each element was interesting but a little weird, especially the lychees buried in the ganache. Lychees are very subtly flavored, and they didn't have much to say for themselves next to all that chocolate. The best part was the liquory sponge cake.
These next two are from Petit Decorer, the pastry shop up the street from my apartment which previously supplied the seasonal tarts for the dinner I made when Yuri was here. First up is their take on the Mont Blanc, a cake I had never seen before coming to Japan but which is one of the classics here. A patisserie just couldn't hold its head up high if its counter didn't contain the on-top-of-spaghetti-lookalike mountain of piped chestnut frosting on top of some combination of pastry cream and white cake. Some places will put a candied chestnut on top or inside, some substitute a tart shell for the cake, some forgo chestnut altogether and pull the whole thing off with sweet potato or pumpkin instead. But chestnut is the classic, and even though it's a fall flavor, the cake is prominent all year around. The Petit Decorer version was excellent, containing a blueberry (or perhaps mixed berry) jam spread over the cake layer, a shortbread base, and the usual vanilla pastry cream beneath the swirls of chestnut frosting.
Next, we have another seasonal tart, this time apple. This one wasn't quite as amazing as the tarts I got there before, but it was still very good. The apples were absolutely melting - they must have been sliced before cooking, and may have been roasted like tarte tatin. They had blackened scorch marks (though this didn't affect the taste at all). The tart itself was almond frangipane and toward the back there was vanilla-flecked pastry cream beneath the apples. The chocolate leaf on top was the only thing that didn't quite work. I actually picked this tart because the leaf was so beautiful, but unfortunately it tasted more like the coloring wax or gel that was used to tint it red than it tasted like chocolate. On the whole, though, it was a wonderful taste of fall. After all, who needs to eat fall leaves when there are apples around?
These next two are from Petit Decorer, the pastry shop up the street from my apartment which previously supplied the seasonal tarts for the dinner I made when Yuri was here. First up is their take on the Mont Blanc, a cake I had never seen before coming to Japan but which is one of the classics here. A patisserie just couldn't hold its head up high if its counter didn't contain the on-top-of-spaghetti-lookalike mountain of piped chestnut frosting on top of some combination of pastry cream and white cake. Some places will put a candied chestnut on top or inside, some substitute a tart shell for the cake, some forgo chestnut altogether and pull the whole thing off with sweet potato or pumpkin instead. But chestnut is the classic, and even though it's a fall flavor, the cake is prominent all year around. The Petit Decorer version was excellent, containing a blueberry (or perhaps mixed berry) jam spread over the cake layer, a shortbread base, and the usual vanilla pastry cream beneath the swirls of chestnut frosting.
Next, we have another seasonal tart, this time apple. This one wasn't quite as amazing as the tarts I got there before, but it was still very good. The apples were absolutely melting - they must have been sliced before cooking, and may have been roasted like tarte tatin. They had blackened scorch marks (though this didn't affect the taste at all). The tart itself was almond frangipane and toward the back there was vanilla-flecked pastry cream beneath the apples. The chocolate leaf on top was the only thing that didn't quite work. I actually picked this tart because the leaf was so beautiful, but unfortunately it tasted more like the coloring wax or gel that was used to tint it red than it tasted like chocolate. On the whole, though, it was a wonderful taste of fall. After all, who needs to eat fall leaves when there are apples around?La Pyramide
Azabu-juban 1-3-13
Petit Decorer
Minami-azabu 1-4-21
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