Soirée de Sucre

I love a good tea party. Especially one filled with great people…

… thrilling city views…


and sweets, bien sur.



The lovely Kathy YL Chan represents Chambre de Sucre, a gorgeous line of gourmet sugars started by the equally lovely Lisa Kunizaki. On Saturday, they hosted a midday sugar spread to showcase their new collection.

The prosecco and tea were delicious, accented with as they were with the pretty little morsels.


And the accompanying sweets were divine.

I went straight for the miso chocolate cake from Kyotofu and the peanut butter chocolate cupcake from Two Little Red Hens.


Both hit the spot: moist, flavorful and way too easy to make disappear.

One lump, or two?

It’s a funny thing, this relationship between the French and Japanese. Their cultures and aesthetics are quite different, but there’s a mutual admiration. There’s an equal love for all things refined and fancy. A higher degree of precision and a shared devotion to details. Pierre Hermé and Jean-Paul Hévin launched their careers in Tokyo. Sadaharu Aoki rocks the éclair and croissant in Paris. Franco-Japanese mélanges totally work.

So it makes perfect sense that there is a Japanese company with a French name that’s soon to be found in New York: Chambre de Sucre.

They’ve taken the humble little sugar cube and turned it into a work of art.

Did you know the French invented the sugar cube? C’est vrai.

And Chambre de Sucre has created little bits of artistry…


… made to charm…

… before they magically disappear in a fine cup of tea.

The great Breton kouign amann

There are two desserts that I’m sort of obsessed with, though I rarely eat them: upside down cake and bread pudding.

I like them both for different reasons. But I guess what they share in common is that heaviness and density that means your belly is going to be nice and bloated, along with a gooey stickiness that I find absolutely irresistible.

So it’s been with excitement and envy that I’ve been stumbling upon great reading and recipes for all things sticky and sweet lately.

First, there were the posts by Dorie Greenspan and David Leibovitz (can I please have their lives??) about kouign amann. No, this pastry/cake (depending how you want to look at it) is neither upside down nor a pudding. But it has same gooeyness that covers your tongue and sticks to your teeth and the same heft that feels like a happy bullet in your gut. All kouign amann is is pastry dough, baked with copious amounts of butter and sugar so that the butter and sugar do their chemical magic and caramelize and congeal and make it sweet and sticky.




I tried my first kouign amann in Nantes last month (the pastry originates in Brittany). Actually, it was a mini version called a kouignette. This candy store where I got it had all kinds of flavors from chocolate to apple, coconut to caramel. As I had anticipated and hoped, it was sugary, sweet and sticky. But sadly, it lacked the omigod factor.

What I’m looking for is something like Molly Killeen’s St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake that Melissa Clark wrote about last week. “A treacly mix of corn syrup, butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla”?? Yes, please! Or this week’s Minimalist ode to a maple pear upside down cake: “Then pour this syrup over the cake, making it tender, sweet and gooey.” It’s almost enough to make you forsake the macarons and pains aux raisins. Almost. But not quite.

Warmly, waffles

Wafels & Dinges is nice sidewalk fare. But it’s an irrefutable pleasure to walk into a café and be smacked in the face with the smell of warm Belgian waffles.

When Amee suggested that Julie and I meet her at Petit Abeille for brunch, I knew I could count on my two dear friends to help me get my daily sweet fix. We split a classic liege waffle.

So dense and springy, the texture was lovely and saturated with a sweet vanilla flavor. The syrup on the side was totally unnecessary, with crunchy bits of granular sugar inside, and a soft shake of confectioner’s sugar on top.

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