Une Pâtisserie

We entered another lockdown on April 3. This lockdown is slightly less restrictive in that we can be 10 km away from home and during the day we don't need to fill out a form stating why we are out of the house. There is a 7 pm curfew as well. Only essential businesses are open: pharmacy, grocery, bakeries, etc. The "essential" list also includes wine shops, hair salons and a few other things you and I might not consider essential. 

We have had a request to show some photos of the items we can find in the many pastry shops around town- and I do mean many! Note also that there are separate boulangeries (bread shops) as well as combination pâtisserie and boulangerie shops. So, with that in mind, we took some photos from a fancy and expensive place: La Ruche Trianon par Thierry Constant.  THATS WHY THERE ARE C'S IN EVERY ONE.

We hadn't investigated this place until mid-March. B came home with a couple of items. Most of the things they sell are either single serve or will serve 2. They do sell some larger cake type items but even these are pretty small. They are very fancy. Even the boxes they put the little items in are fancy.

This is called Cake Pistache-Griotte. It definitely should serve 3. It has layers of pistachio biscuit/cake between layers of a sour morello cherry compote. It's covered in a pistachio laden glaze with pistachios, morello cherries and marshmallow cubes on top. The cherry compote was perfection!

This little number looks like a pear might be hidden inside. Not at all! This one is called Val d'Isere. It has a whipped cream layer, some chestnut filling, a chestnut mousse and a cookie base all layered inside of this thing covered with a piped mousse. Chestnuts are everywhere here and not just at Christmas!

We have passed by this shop a couple of times so on a few of our walks we took some photos. The first three photos were taken late on that day and the shelves were fairly empty.

There are a few larger entries ( right side) but most are 2.5-3 inches in diameter.

The shelves were much fuller in these photos. It was earlier in the day.

On another walk, we took some closeups. Here are some of the most interesting looking items. Each one is a work of culinary art.

This one has a cookie base, a red fruit compote, morello cherries and a vanilla mascarpone mousse.

This one has a Viennese chocolate biscuit base along with crunchy nuts, vanilla cream and a chocolate mousse layer.

Lemon cream, meringue with a cookie crust.

An almond biscuit, lime, purple black current cream and mascarpone mousse.

Vanilla apple compote, creamy caramel, vanilla mascarpone mousse, crumbled nuts in a sugar cookie type base.

Apple filled turnover type thing and a pistachio paste filled thing.

Light coconut cream, cooked pineapple, passion fruit, almond cookie base.

White chocolate Bavarian, coconut dacquoise, mango, passion fruit cream.

Dark chocolate ganache, sour cherries and chocolate cookie base.

Chocolate brownie, honey ganache, raspberry cream and whipped raspberry mascarpone.

Are you hungry yet?

One last note: This place is expensive so we mostly just look!