A small group of us met one afternoon for the eclair tasting. What's better to do on a rainy day than stuff your face with pastry? Everyone bought one chocolate and one other flavor of choice from a bakery of their choice. Contenders were L'Atelier de L'Eclair, La Patisserie des Reves, L'Eclair de Genie, and a local corner bakery.
It turns out it was difficult to keep this a truly "blind" taste test because the presentation was so obviously different among the eclairs. There was a fair amount of variation between both the pastry style and the cream style among the bakeries. For chocolate, everyone seemed to agree that L'eclair de Genie was their favorite, but it was a tight race with L'Atelier de L'eclair. We agreed that because of the tube, there was TOO much chocolate {I never thought I would say that, ever} in the Patisserie des Reves one. The bakery eclair held a solid ground - it was one of my favorite fillings.
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| Patisserie des Reves, L'Eclair de Genie, local bakery, L'Atelier de L'Eclair |
In the choose your own flavor category, we had 2 coffee eclairs and 2 salted butter caramel eclairs. The bakery eclair actually beat out Patisserie des Reves in the coffee flavored category because we felt you could actually eat it with a cup of coffee. The Reves one was overwhelmingly coffee flavored that it would be hard to eat with a cup of coffee. But by far, the winner of the category and of the entire tasting was L'eclair de Genie's salted butter caramel. As soon as everyone put the first bite in their mouths, the oohs and ahhs began, quickly followed by salivating for the next bite!
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| L'Eclair de Genie, Patisserie des Reves, L'Atelier de L'Eclair, local bakery |
Will I return to any of these bakeries for more eclairs? L'eclair de Genie 100% yes. They have a ton of inventive flavors and given what I've tasted so far, I'm sure they're all delicious. The price point of 5€ seems a bit steep at first, but given that L'atelier de L'eclair is the same, and La Patisserie des Reves comes in just over 6€ a pop, I'm okay with 5€ for a treat! But, if you're looking to save a little money, a corner bakery's eclairs, costing 2-3€ each, are still delicious and should definitely not be avoided!
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A few weeks later, a much larger group of us met on a sunny, warm day at Champ de Mars for a tarte au citron tasting. This was by far the most difficult tasting we've done to date, as we felt there was less distinct variations among tarts. We used trusty Paris by Mouth again for recommendations on where to get our tarts from, and had quite a variety, including Sebastien Gaudard, Secco, Eric Kayser, Sadaharu Aoki, a few corner bakeries, and Monoprix Bonne Maman refrigerated tarts.
We ended up separating meringue versions into their own category (but in general, no one liked the meringue versions, especially the Bonne Maman ones!!) Of the 5 non-meringue versions, Sadaharu Aoki came in first, but very close behind were Secco and Eric Kayser. The common themes for these three were: creamy filling, lemony but not overpoweringly lemony, and a good crust! Interestingly, Sebastien Gaudard, which was #2 on Paris by Mouth's list was almost dead last in our tasting. Most people felt it was just "eh", and rather plain tasting. I felt like it would probably be what mine would taste like if I attempted one at home.
Unlike eclairs, where we would be happy eating corner bakery eclairs, especially given the price savings, this is not necessarily the case with tarts. Sadaharu Aoki was definitely the most expensive at 4,60€ each, but Secco and Eric Kayser both were around 3,50€, which was the same price as random corner bakery ones. I think I'll stick to the Paris by Mouth list for this particular category! We've still got some more tasting ideas, but I think we all need a little sugar break, so it may be a while until our next tasting! :)
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A few weeks later, a much larger group of us met on a sunny, warm day at Champ de Mars for a tarte au citron tasting. This was by far the most difficult tasting we've done to date, as we felt there was less distinct variations among tarts. We used trusty Paris by Mouth again for recommendations on where to get our tarts from, and had quite a variety, including Sebastien Gaudard, Secco, Eric Kayser, Sadaharu Aoki, a few corner bakeries, and Monoprix Bonne Maman refrigerated tarts.
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| The top 3 were also the 3 prettiest in the picture! :) |
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