Post Midterm Update (Part 2)....

My mom and I went grocery shopping yesterday. On the way home, we made a stop at a bakery--we had bought an eclair here before, and it was pretty good. Mom probably liked its price better than its taste. Wanting to try something new, I chose a baklava (I have had it before, but Mom hasn't) and a "Marzipan Pie".

Maybe there is an official name for this pastry, but that's how the girl who worked there described it.

So after dinner, we brewed some gourmet coffee (whole bean, organic Colombian--we splurged for the first time on coffee...) and divided the pastry among the three of us.

I tried the baklava first. Then I noticed that this one had only two layers: the top consisting of phyllo pastry sheets and the bottom layer was the nut-layer. Baklava should have multiple (as in, more than two) layers of phyllo and chopped nut filling. The cross-section should look like layers of the pastry with the nuts interspersed between them.

Then I turned to the Marzipan Pie. I was getting a bit skeptical after the baklava. First bite...Hm. Marzipan with good almond flavor, with a cherry jam filling in a pie crust. First several bites were good...then after about a third bite, things got mediocre. The pie finished tasting....flat. No depth to the flavor, just almond and (a little too much) sugar, although that is to be expected from a marzipan--I mean, that's what marzipan is made of; almond paste and sugar. In other words, it probably shouldn't have been used for a pie filling.

What makes a pie delicious is the balance between the complex flavors of the filling (i.e. apple with 4 different kinds of spices, or the rich and deep body of chocolate cream) paired with a more bland crust. If this one had marzipan with some other filling(s) it might have been better.

....Then I took a sip of the coffee. Pretty bitter...but I like my coffee bitter, so I liked it. Mom, on the other hand, was quite disappointed. She doesn't like overly bitter coffee, and was hoping it to be more acidic, claiming that this coffee "tastes more like Arabica coffee, not Colombian!"

So that was last night. The pastries AND the coffee were a bit disappointing. Then the next morning....



(...to be continued)

***Update (05/19/2010) This "Marzipan Pie" has the official name Frangipane Tart. And it is supposed to taste like marzipan, along with another ingredient for the filling.