Monday, July 4, 2011

Gastronomical Exploration: Leslie's French Pastries

Around the same neighborhood as Normandie Cafe--as a matter of fact, on the same street, just a mile or two apart--is an old, been-there-for-the-last-fifty-years pastry shop. My parents and I have often passed by Leslie's French Pastry Shop, vowing to someday try their pastries.
So, as part of my pastry shop-hopping, I paid them a visit....
Inside was very modest, 'mom-and-pop' bakery shop, nothing gawdy which I appreciated--definitely NOT like Mrs. Backer's. They had a decent variety of pastries and baked goods, from the usual cookies/brownies to the fancy wedding cakes on display. I got the eclair and the napoelon topped with marzipan--which is unusual in Salt Lake. This is perhaps the only place that tops their napoleons with marzipan; all the other places simply dust them with powdered sugar or use sugar glaze.

Very cute, pink marzipan. It was the usual marzipan, sweet, but not cloyingly so, The puff pastry it was pretty standard. As for the cream...there was something about it that I can't quite figure out...it was unusually buttery for a pastry cream. I wonder if they whipped butter into the pastry cream??

Cross-section of the eclairs. Again, pretty standard--and again, the cream was the same one used in the napoleon. Too buttery to be pastry cream, but not quite straight butter either.

I may have to try this place again, this time with my mother, to get a second opinion.

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