Chocoboise and Eclair Macaron. Honfleur (again), France. 1st July 2011.

Back to Honfleur again ready for the ferry, we couldn't resist one last French delight before landing back in the UK. So a quick dash into town lead us to the chic L'Art Chocolate a vey slick establishment and well worth a visit. Unfortunately we didn't get to to eat our chosen delicacies until after they had spent 4 hours at sea and six hours sitting in English traffic jams on the way back home to Staffordshire. They were still vey nearly perfect and it wasn't all down to the coolbox, there was lots of skill in making these.

First was the eclair, but no choux pastry in sight, it was made with chocolate macaroon, filled with creme anglaise and fresh summer berries, very classy! Quite biscuity, light, lovely and not too sweet. It's probably quite good that we can't buy these in our village shop, we would have to eat far too many.

Eclair Macaron
Cake Rating- 8/10 Cost 3.50 euros

Did we save the best 'til last though? A spectacular looking deep raspberry coloured dusting over a sculptured mousse cake. It was decorated with a whole vanilla pod and chocolate slice. On the inside it was a raspberry and vanilla mousse on a thin delicate sponge base, with a hidden surprise hazelnut layer and also the thinnest slither of sweet concentrated raspberry jelly. Creamy perfection.

Chocoboise
Cake Rating- 9/10 Cost 3.50 euros

Mousse au Chocolate and Pschitt. La Ferte Bernard, France. 29th June 2011

We were heading back north through France back towards the ferry and the UK. Camping en route as normal, we headed for the town of La Ferte Bernard (mainly because we knew that if Polly was with us we would have called it 'Farty Bernard' and she would have chuckled). It was a lovely hot day, in fact 40 degrees as we were driving. The municipal camping is slightly deceptive. You reach it by driving through an industrial estate, but it proved to be lovely. It was made more perfect by the fact that you can walk down a short path to a lovely lake. So after a swim we headed for the beautiful old town. We visited Patissier Chocolatier Michel Boucher on Rue Huisine. It wasn't the most inspirational of French patisseries.

Mousse au Chocolate and Pschitt

Continuing the adolescent humour we confess we bought the Pschitt purely for the name! It was a pastry base with a layer of lemony creme anglaise topped with white chocolate mousse. Finished with lemon icing and redcurrants. Lovely and refreshing, tart and sweet. The pastry was a bit of a let down, but by this point we were fully into blog narrative mode so maybe we're becomming hyper-critical!

Cake Rating- 6/10 Cost 2.35 euros

Second was the mousse. Really cleverly made with layers of chocolate sponge and orange mousse but with a clever hidden core of choclate mousse, how do they do that?! It was topped with mandarins. It could have been horribly sickly, but it was just nice and light, must be how the French stay so thin when there's so much yummy stuff around, they get lots of air into it!

Cake rating- 7/10 Cost 2.35 euros

Framboise Mousse Cake and Gateux a Noix. Gramat, France. 25th June 2011

We'd arrived at our destination for this journey. Jack's parents house perched on the top of a hill, surrounded by sheep, just outside of the village of Bio in the Lot region of France. Feels like home and it's so good to be there. We were housed in the smaller of the two barns called the Hangar and that was where we feasted on the first of todays delights, purchased from Patisserie Quercynoisse in the nearby town of Gramat. It was a hot hot day so it called for something light and refreshing.

Framboise Mousse Cake

The first we tried was the Framboise Mousse. A lighter than light (we probably lost calories eating it!) mousse layer cake. A wafer thin chocolate sponge base, a thin layer of mousse, a layer of sponge soaked in sweet raspberry coulis, then a thicker layer of mouse topped with glaze and fruit. Angel Delight for grown-ups! Not too sweet, not at all cloying, lovely for the hot weather. One of the best!

Cake rating- 9/10 Cost- 2.40 euros

Gateux a Noix

Our second had to wait until the next day because it was a sharing cake and we had company for lunch. The local speciality for Quercy is the Gateux a Noix. We had expected quite a heavy nut tart, but no! It was a lighter version of a Bakewell Pudding, made with the local walnuts. Sweet, light with a bit of a maple syrup flavour. A textural delight with an almost meringue like crispy top and slightly gooey nutty centre- yum!

Cake rating- 8/10 Cost- 7.50 euros (fed 5 people)

And we had to show you the setting, beautiful!

Framboise Mille Feuille and Tarte au Poires, Amboise, France. 22nd June 2011

Making our way south through France we passed through the picturesque town of Amboise and had to stop for a coffee. Fuelled with caffeine from the Patissier-Chocolatier-Traiteur, P Gerard's Salon De The. A lovely friendly shop with "the best real French coffee....ahhh" according to Jack who is a bit of a coffee expert as well as knowing his cake! We treated ourselves to two lovely cakes, strictly in the interests of blogging of course! We didn't actually manage to eat our cake until after supper (yummy ratatouille) at Les Haches.

Framboise Mille Feuille

Firstly we tried the Framboise Mille Feuille, a classic of course. Scummy and messy, we'd have done better with a plate and forks, but we're camping so minimal washing up is essential. Lovely smooth custard with fresh fresh raspberries. The pastry just maybe a little burnt but it cut through the sweetness....just lovely really.

Cake rating- 8/10 Cost- 2.60 euros

Tarte au Poires

The second we shared was the prettiest of pretty Tarte au Poires. Layered wafer thin sliced pear arranged as a rose with scorched edges to highlight the shape, all on a lovely choux pastry base. Not sweet enough for Jack but perfect for me, simple fresh and surely counts as one of your 'five a day'. It's never worth falling out over cake (or anything else for that matter) and we amicably agreed the score in the end (should have been at least a point higher though!!)

Cake rating- 8/10 Cost- 2.60 euros

I guess it's worth mentioning the kind of day we had before getting to the cake point. We had woken up in a borrowed tent, which managed to actually rain more on the inside than it did on the outside (thanks Mum!) We drove 200 miles, safe in the knowledge that we didn't need to worry about finding a campsite, as most French towns have incredible 'camping municipal'. Cheap and cheerful they always fit the bill and always have great facilities. Except today. Today's target town did have a campsite, situated between an abatoir and a road! Oddly perhaps, we took the decision to continue driving through the one area of France with no campsites at all! We ended up tired and road weary at Les Haches, perhaps anything at all would have tasted wonderful!

Religieuse à la Violette and Tarte Citron- Honfleur, France. 20th June 2011

The lovely but touristy town of Honfleur has a good number of delicious looking patisseries we chose “Oliver Deschamps No. 41 Rue du Dauphin” for this our first official cake tasting specifically for the blog.

I suppose now is a good time to explain the cake rating process! We share the cake between us, discussing with each mouthful the sweetness, texture, appearance etc. Sounding like a couple of fake food critics, we enjoy a good debate about whether this one was better than the last. We take cost into account so that a humble lardy cake can compete on equal terms with a hand crafted French delight. Then we randomly pick a number between one and ten and pretend that it is a thoroughly scientific process.

We were allowed a cake each for this culinary tour, not one with two spoons as per our normal habits!

Religieuse à la Violette and Tarte Citron

We tried the Tarte Citron first, a beautiful little golden dome of tongue curling tart lemon curd (although Jack thought it was something posher than normal curd) on top of a traditional Normandy galette sponge biscuit, you could taste just how much delicious French butter had gone into the biscuit.

Cake rating- 7.5/10 Cost- 2.6 euros

Then we had to try the very showy Religieuse a la Violette. Light as a feather but a bit too sweet for our taste buds. 2 choux pastry balls filled with crème Anglaise and covered with violet essence (and coloured) icing. It was topped with a sweet white chocolate hat. Would be Polly’s favourite for the colour alone!

Cake rating- 7.5/10 Cost- 2.4 euros

Gateau Saint Honoré- Westhope, Shropshire. 31st May 2011

Ok, I know that I said I would start this off with our recent cake tour of France, but this one needs a quick mention first.

As far as cakes made in a field go, this one has to be one of the best! We got the recipe from a James Martin cookbook, it’s a traditional French gateau found all over France, so of course we decided it’s entirely possible to make it in a tent.

We did have to cheat just a little. Instead of the traditional choux pastry base we used a shop bought sponge flan with the edging cut off. We covered it with quenelles of freshly made crème patissier (packet custard whipped with fresh cream), we used the same mixture to fill the shop bought profiteroles, but before we filled them we made caramel by melting sugar on the camp stove and topped each profiterole with it.

Gateau Saint Honoré

Not a bad effort especially as it was so hot. We shared with Mary and John in their campervan, we could have done with a few more people to help us eat it, but our only neighbours were sheep as the lovely Westhope campsite was completely empty apart from us.

Cake rating: 6/10- good effort for a field, but could have been better!

What is "Cakes We've Had"?

This blog started as an idea some years ago, before blogs really existed in fact.

We were sitting outside our tent in Normandy, France eating some superb patisserie. It was Me (George), my husband (Jack) and our daughter (Polly). I can’t remember now what the cakes were, but I do remember the conversation. Jack was reminiscing about an earlier trip to Paris with a friend in his post-student days, he told us that they had spent days wandering the streets of the capital in search of the one best cake….an arduous task! Polly, being interested in all things ‘cake’ decided that the best job in the world would be to become a ‘cake reviewer’. The job description would read something like: to find lovely cakes, eat them and then write a book about them- I think everyone would agree it would be brilliant way to live except for the possibility of an ever expanding waist line!

Following that conversation we spent a few years doing our best to sample patisserie from Spain, Italy and the UK, not obsessively of course, just for treats!

Time has moved on and the cake book idea is now this blog “Cakes We’ve Had”. We will do our best to sample cakes, pastries and all things lovely wherever we go, we’ll tell you all about them, we’ll give them a very scientific rating and you can add your own comments about patisserie from around the world. Some may be from shops, some we’ll bake ourselves, the only criteria is that it must be about cake! Until someone can prove to us otherwise, we firmly believe the best cake is in France, so the blog starts with a culinary tour as a benchmark of cakes to come.

It’s just the two of us now, we lost Polly to epilepsy 18 months ago, this blog is in her memory and we will be tasting every mouthful with thoughts of her in our hearts forever. This is for you Polly…..