The French for window shopping is faire de la lèche-vitrine – literally: to lick the window. And since non-essential businesses like clothing shops have been shuttered for months, now (soon to reopen!), the only window-licking I’ve been doing has been in pastry shops.
Not that I’m complaining.
Pâtisseries in France (much like chocolatiers) bedeck their windows similarly to jewelry shops. A huge part of the pleasure of visiting one, at least for me, comes just from looking at all of the beautiful cakes lined up in a row, before proceeding to the (often agonizing) choice of which one (or two!) to take home. And at KL Pâtisserie, the window-licking pleasure is two-fold.
At this little shop in the 17th, the laboratoire is on the ground floor, which means that as you examine the wares, you also get the scent of butter and caramel wafting into the space. This sort of olfactory experience may be common at a boulangerie, but it’s the first time I’ve ever experienced it in a pastry shop. To glimpse the pâtissiers at work perfecting each and every little cake as you make your selection is pretty much (you’ll have to excuse me…) the icing on the cake.S
It’s honestly kind of a miracle that I came away with just three cakes.
I’ll start things off with the simplest of the bunch, which I didn’t try but am told was a fairly straightforward financier – a “traveling cake” – made with almond flour and butter. The orange peel on top was slightly misleading, as this cake didn’t actually have any orange flavor in it.
Still nice, though.
That said, let’s move on to slightly weightier offerings. To wit: this creation dubbed Pomoroso.
Pomoroso is a “cheesecake” in the French sense, which is to say, an entremets made with some small amount of whipped cream cheese. It offers, not the dense cheesiness of a New York cheesecake (or even the rich, savoriness of a Basque one), but rather a subtle counterbalance to the sweet scents of vanilla and cardamom.
The cheesecake layer is joined by buttery genoise and grapefruit gelée. But honestly, what sold me on this one is that humble-looking base layer, which has this fine yet crisp texture kind of halfway between a Butterfinger and nougatine. Standing in stark contrast to the shortbread that is so often the base for this kind of cake, it contributed a textural element that was the ideal foil for all that softness and tenderness.
This dessert effortlessly combined the savory notes from the cheesecake, the bitter, sour notes of the grapefruit, and the sweet, aromatic character of the vanilla- and cardamom-scented cream. With the textural elements of the base, the sheer contrast in this little cake kicked it into the next-level entremets category.
And yet.
See this guy? This unassuming little éclair?
He’s not unassuming at all.
This salted caramel éclair was not only filled with a light and airy salted caramel pastry cream, but hidden throughout were little pockets of actual pure salted caramel: rich, and heady, and sweet, and dark, with just the right amount of bitter and salt to stand up to that sweetness. Try as I might, I couldn’t make this last longer than five seconds.
If that isn’t a sign of a great pastry, I truly don’t know what is.
KL P̢tisserie Р78 avenue de Villiers, 75017