Now, I have to say that I’m not a big fan of blueberries for much the same reason that I’m not a big fan of raisins– I can’t stand the darn stems that often remain intact in cookies and pies.  This slice of blueberry pie was astoundingly good, however.  The fruit was vibrantly fresh tasting and not too sweet, and the crust had a lovely raw sugar top that complemented the filling perfectly.  And a little dollop of unsweetened whipped cream was just the perfect accompaniment.

I had never had lemon chess pie, so I was very curious.  Chess pies are apparently a Southern sugary custard pie made with corn meal.  No one seems to know the origin of the name.  Perhaps it’s from keeping it in a chest or from saying that it’s “‘jes pie,” as opposed to cake or something.  Whatever it is, this slice was quite good, but not as amazing as the blueberry.  The lemon flavor was very delicate and it wasn’t overly sweet at all.  My only problem with it was that it was a bit soggy, but that was really probably due to the fact that it was 80 degrees in there.  I guess they don’t have AC?

While we were eating our spoils, a huge group of tourists/vultures came in and snapped up the rest of the lemon chess pie, and under “PIES:,” the in-store chalkboard soon read “♥ Blueberry.”  It was only about 4pm, and they were almost out of everything.  But that’s really the way every bakery should be.  The fact that they run out of stuff means that their stock is always fresh.  Well done, proprietresses Melissa and Emily Elsen, now that my G-train is running all the way to 4th Ave., I’ll be visiting your shop again soon!

Note: you can’t buy whole pies on the spot– you have to call ahead and place an order with 48 hours’ notice.

The juice had a kind of yellowish-green appearance, and tasted of slightly sweet vegetable matter.  Not so good.  No one in my group could bear to finish the bottle.  I wonder how sugar itself is so yummy, then.  Also rum.  And the billions of other things that are made with sugar.  Other countries apparently add ginger, lemon, or mint to their sugarcane juices– that’s a really good idea.  The proprietress claimed that this juice would be very good for us on our hike, since it’s similar to an energy drink.  She also said it helps with digestion.  I did at least find that I had more energy for a bit and I did not notice any stomach demons, so I guess it worked?

The place was William Greenberg Desserts.  I was delighted to discover that this was a Jewish specialty bakery, vending such delights as hamantaschen, black and white cookies, and rugelach.  Still dreadfully missing the hamantaschen from Gertel’s, an amazing Jewish bakery that closed up shop on the LES a few years ago, I figured I’d try three varieties here: cherry, apricot, and poppy seed.  Now, at most bakeries, when you buy some cookies, they just throw them into a white paper bag, you pay a couple of bucks, and off you go.  But, I guess since I was on the UES, they had to go the fancy box and store sticker route.  I got a bad feeling that the $10 bill I had ready would maybe not quite be enough.  The final bill for three cookies was $10.50 — yeesh.  And, since I really needed one to eat immediately, the whole box and sticker sitch wasn’t good.  I managed to wrestle out the cherry one and was surprised by how soft it was.  It was so soft, in fact, that its own weight on either side of my fingers made it crack in half, and almost $1.75-worth of precious merchandise nearly fell to the ground!  But my lightning quick dessert-saving reflexes kicked in, and my cookie escaped a wretched fate.  A passerby who must have witnessed my fumble called out, “Wow!  You really dodged a bullet with that one!”  That’s true, dude, I really did.

So, the cherry hamantasch was a-ite.  Kinda “cherry pie filling,” if you know what I mean.  And its cookie portion was actually the only really soft one– the other two were the more traditional (?) “short,” or buttery-crusty kind.  The apricot one was very sour and sort of acrid-tasting.  But the poppy seed was quite good– a nice balance of sweet and bitter.  I’ll probably give WGD another try if I’m in the area.  I think I did the world a disservice by not trying the black and white cookie, so that will have to be remedied.

After ten endless years, I did come back.  Would the castel be different?  Would I be different?  I worried.  But when my castel and I were in each other’s presence again, there was no doubt that the love would be stronger than ever.  After sating my desire, my head turned towards other temptations, such as a chocolate cakey delight and a chocolate-raspberry-pear hybrid.  These were equally amazing.  I tried to explain in my now-limited French how much I adore the unassuming Le Pavé du Roy patisserie to the other patrons there.  They gave me blank stares.  Of course this place was good– there would be another revolution if every little hole-in-the-wall patisserie in every crappy town wasn’t good.

In my travels, I encountered some over-the-top fancy pastries, too, that were way outta my league.  They looked like ottomans, and were almost scientific in their perfection.  The ones from Richart were accompanied by geologic-like schematical diagrams, so that you could see cross sections of exactly what was in each masterpiece.  They had serious names likes “Fire & Ice” and “Sun’s Zest.”  After scratching my head a bit trying to read the pastry “maps,” I discovered the one I would have chosen had I grown an extra stomach: “Crisp Flavors,” made up of layers of green lemon and caramel mousses, caramel-infused madeleine cookies, almond nougat, salted butter caramel cream, and toasted almond dacquoise.  Just writing this description made me feel faint– does anyone know where I put my smelling salts?

Final note: there is a specialty in Lyon called praline rouge, which you find topping many pastries.  The first time I saw it, I attributed the red color to a fruit, but a pastry proprietor told me that it’s basically just nuts (usually almonds or hazelnuts) ground up with butter, sugar, and some red food coloring; she had no idea why this trend started, and they never use any color other than red.  Weird.  Also not that tasty, really, because it’s a little “one-note” and makes you crave raspberries for some reason…

If you ever find yourself in Aix-en-Provence, by the way, hie thyself to:

I also tried an iced nougat at Brasserie Georges in Lyon, just for scientific study.  It really wasn’t tough or chewy like you’d imagine a real frozen chunk of nougat would be, but rather had that nutty flavor and candied fruit, but with a decidedly ice creamy texture.  It was tasty and a nice antidote for a rich meal.  Our evening was punctuated with the waiters firing up an old-timey barrel organ to play Happy Birthday, which would be followed by a baked Alaska-type dessert garnished with a live sparkler being placed in front of a lucky birthday boy or girl.

My favorite place in NYC to find a good macaron is Almondine, with locations in D.U.M.B.O. and Park Slope.  I found that French pâtisseries offer so many more interesting flavors than just your average chocolate or strawberry.  I saw mandarin orange, lychee, zucchini-mint, salted caramel, white peach-saffron, grapefruit, Earl Grey tea, green lemon-ginger, cola, rum-raisin, and marshmallow, to name a few.  Perhaps French pastry chefs like to experiment as much with macarons as their American counterparts do with ice cream.

Here are a few samples from different places in Lyon:

I also learned about the existence of both savory macarons, like black olive, gorgonzola-sesame, and tomato-basil, and sweet and savory hybrids, like duck foie gras with apple-spice, pimento-pepper, and carrot-cumin.  Maybe they would have been nice to try for anthropological reasons, but I had valuable stomach space to preserve!

I begin with the humble crêpe.  Maybe you’ve had one slathered with gel-like “strawberry” sauce at some crêperie in the Lower East Side.  Or you’ve tried a specimen from one of seemingly countless NYC street fairs, or even at the Bastille Day festival put on by the French Institute.  It’s fun to watch them use that little wooden wand to work their magic, isn’t it?  And how wonderful that even the bad ones are pretty good, right?

My favorite crêperie in all the land is Crêpes à Gogo in Aix-en-Provence, a small and chichi college town located just north of Marseille, and my old stomping ground when I studied abroad there.  It’s located in a depressing underground passageway beneath a traffic circle, but they’ve been around since 1979, so they must be doing something right.  They make both savory crêpes (aka galettes) and sweet crêpes:
We began with a forestière galette (ham, swiss cheese, and mushrooms) made with buckwheat flour.  It was plump with filling– a nice amount, but not sickening– and we (perhaps erroneously) felt semi-healthy for getting something with a buckwheat base.  Then we moved on to our lemon and sugar crêpe, made with generous squeezes of a lemon wedge (not that bottled stuff) and lots of sugar.  Yes, you can get Nutella and whipped cream, but the simplicity (not to mention caloric savings) of lemon and sugar are heavenly.  The secret seems to be in the repeated application of toppings after each fold of the crêpe.  Our crêpe was warm, moist, refreshing, sweet, springy, and light.  It was so juicy that the syrup dripped on my purse and leg, and, amazingly, also on my partner’s leg and shoe.  It was pretty windy, but I guess I must chalk my messiness up to being in a crêpe daze.  Adieu, perfect crêpes… until we meet again.

Wispa & Flake bars are basically textured Cadbury chocolate.  It just goes to show what a difference texture makes, because I’m not a huge fan of plain Cadbury chocolate, which they sell in the form of the Dairy Milk bar.  I think it’s too rich, milky, and it has a tinge of raisin flavor.  Wispas & Flakes solve this problem by making the chocolate lighter.

Wispas are full of tiny little air bubbles, which somehow produce a light and silky chocolate taste– almost like a meltaway.  I adore them, but they are pretty hard to get in the U.S., so my aunt kindly brings me yearly stocks of them, which I gobble up faster than I care to admit.  The only person I’ve ever shared them with is my chocolate-crazy niece, Maddy, who eats them in quiet reverence at the tender age of seven.  Well done, little one!  For some insane reason, Cadbury stopped making the Wispa in 2003, but a public outcry caused them to come back “for a limited time” in 2007.  Then after more squirming and rage from the public (why must they play with our minds with this whole “limited time” thing?!?!?!), the world gave a great sigh of relief when the Wispa was brought back permanently in 2008.

Flakes are made of bark-like ribbons.  Buying an intact specimen in the store, far less keeping that way across the Atlantic, is almost impossible, but somehow the one in the photo made it, that is until I ate it.  It must be pointed out, by the way, that a soft serve ice cream cone in Britain without a Flake sticking out of it is like a kitty without fur: naked and sad.

Double-Decker bars get their name from the iconic British double-decker buses.  They have a layer of crunchy, chocolatey biscuit, and a layer of nougat.  I do get that hint of raisin flavor somehow, but I like it here.

The Crunchie claims to be a chocolate bar filled with a honeycomb center.  Since chewing on wax is out of the question, the next best thing is chewing on something called a honeycomb, but is actually a super crunchy, tooth-achingly sweet, golden candy.  Thank goodness for the nice amount of chocolate coating to provide some balance.

While doing a scotch of research for this post, I discovered that Kraft also owns: Lu (makers of the wonderful Petit Écolier chocolate biscuits), Côte D’or (the Cadbury’s of Belgium), Marabou (the Cadbury’s of Sweden), Milka (the Hershey’s of much of Europe), and Toblerone (the triangular-shaped Swiss chocolate bar with crunchy bits of nougat).  Kraft’s all like, “Bring it, Nestlé.”

I also would be remiss if I didn’t write a quick word about Britain’s love of biscuits, which are often a chocolate & dry cookie combo and can be eaten at almost any time of day, but most often make an appearance at tea times.  Digestive Biscuits, a deceptively healthy sounding example, are my favorite.  They’re simply delicious.  You can get them without chocolate, but why would you?  They’re like wheat cookies or something– still sweet, but also a bit worthy, as my mother says.

Millionaire’s shortbread consists of three layers: shortbread (a very buttery, crusty cookie), a mix of toffee & dulce de leche, and chocolate.  It’s obviously quite sweet, so I love it. 

Tiffin is traditionally made up of cocoa, Golden Syrup (light molasses), stale biscuits and whatever else you need to use up around the house, like raisins & nuts (Scottish people are a frugal lot).  It often has a layer of melted chocolate on top and requires no baking.  Just mix it up and pop it in the fridge.  I have no idea what the relation this kind of tiffin has, if any, to the similarly-named Indian lunch.  Unless, of course, people would eat this dessert for lunch, which I can totally get behind.

I have a confession to make: I don’t like dates.  They look like roaches whole, they look like roaches squished, and their flavor is meh.  In the interest of cultural anthropology, I must report on the ubiquitous date square in Scotland.  It tastes like you think it will.

Banoffee (banana & toffee) pie, however, is wonderful, if you get a good one.  It consists of a layer of a pie shell filled with sliced bananas, toffee & dulce de leche, and whipped cream.  What’s not to like?