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