Simply for Inspiration: Dalloyau Cakes

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Simply for Inspiration: Pierre Hermé’s Ispahan Croissant

This mouthwatering piece of pastry is the brainchild of Paris’ top pâtisserie chef Pierre Hermé.

The Ispahan flavor concept is a melodic combination of rose, litchi, and raspberry.  The red flecks clinging to the outside?  Dried raspberry.  The almond cream hiding inside the croissant is flavored with rose water and studded with litchis.

Caravans of students from school would grab the metro to the nearest PH store for these babies, bringing them back for the people who didn’t have time to get away!  Hands down, the best school snack I’ve ever had!

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A Twist of East and West: Sadaharu Aoki

Sadaharu Aoki is a master of all masters when it comes to twisting classic recipes with unexpected flavors.  Aoki was born and raised in Japan.  After finishing culinary school in Tokyo, he moved to Paris, France looking for job to improve his talents.  It was there that Aoki started capitolizing on pairing classic French pastry recipes with unique Japanese flavors.  His first shop, Pâtisserie Sadaharu Aoki, opened in 2001.  Eight years later, he has three shops open in Paris and two in Tokyo.  His shops are Japano-Francophiles playlands!

The cases gleam with blindingly bright colored twists inside.  And believe it or not, those intense hues are all naturel — Aoki doesn’t use any artifical colors or flavorings.

His Black Sesame éclair (accompanied with an Ume macaron in the picture) is a prime example. Aoki adds Japanese black sesame paste to French pastry cream, then encases it in pâte à choux – providing a slight variation on the traditionally chocolate or coffee flavored éclairs.  With a perspective outside of traditional, Aoki also makes French flavored éclairs with caramel and sea salt.  The fondant on top glistens smoothly, the pastry cream-pastry ratio is spot on (no messy overflow or cracks), and the intesity of the flavors is enough to yell “THIS ISN’T YOUR AVERAGE ECLAIR”, yet still leaves you wanting seconds.

Aoki also uses macarons, chocolates, cakes, and ice cream sandwiches to showcase flavors, among others!  Yuzu is a sour Japanese citrus fruit that tastes like a mixture of grapefruit, lemon and tangerine.  Ume, a sour plum, is eaten many ways in Japan:  dried, pickled, wrapped in a triangle of rice, and thanks to Aoki, also in dessert.  Genmaicha is a mixture of green tea and toasted brown rice.  You can see the tea leaves and puffed brown rice grains that expanded while roasting on the top of Aoki’s Genmaicha éclair.  Azuki beans are sweet red beans, that are either left whole or crushed into a paste and used as dessert fillings.  And probably the most spoken Japanese dessert flavor, green tea.  But from Aoki’s macarons to his éclairs or his “Bamboo” cake (a green tea-flavored Opéra), the green tea flavoring is delicate and deep, never grassy or over-powering

Sadaharu Aoki’s talent in twisting unexpected marriages rings around the world and shouldn’t be missed next time you’re in France or Japan.

Paris locations:

-35, rue Vaugirard 75006

-56, boulevard Port Royale 75005

-Galerie Lafayette Gourmet; 40, boulevard Haussemann 75009

Tokyo locations:

– 3-14-1 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku

– 3-4-1 Shinkokusai BLD Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku

– 9-7-4 Akasaka Minato-ku, Tokyo Midtown B1F

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