The French Patisserie

"The French Patisserie", perhaps a bit of a pretentious name, particularly given the small portfolio of products offered by the said establishment.

"We provide French Macarons as well as Mousse cakes to wholesale companies. We also have a small retail outlet where customers can come in and buy our products at our location in Pacifca." 

Looking for a common french pastry, like, oh, I dunno, a croissant?  No luck.  Ok, how about something tricky like a cannelé?  Nope.  Just, macaroons and mousse cakes.  Granted, macarons are french pastries but ... yeah.

Anyway, The French Patisserie is a small wholesale bakery, located in Pacifica.  It was started in 1989, but closed in 2020 during the pandemic.  Their goods are shipped nationwide, and distributed locally, all frozen.  Even though I doubted the pedigree of these items, you know how much I love desserts, so when I had the opportunity to check the company out through my catering service, I did.

Les Pavés

I started with the mousse cakes, er, Les Pavés.  Available in Bite Size, by the Slice, Individual Rounds, or Quarter Sheet Pan.  We had mostly the individuals, since it was for plated dinner desserts, although tried Bite Size at an event.

Chocolate Ganache (Mini Round).

"Layers of chocolate ganache and moist chocolate sponge cake."

First up, chocolate.

One of my co-workers raved about this, so I decided to try it, even though I'm not really one for cake, chocolate desserts, or commercially produced frozen desserts.

It was lackluster in my opinion.

The light colored layer was chocolate cake, very dry, certainly not moist as marketed.  I did not like the cake.

The ganache was better than the cake, but, not particularly good.  At least it was dark chocolate, and fairly creamy?

We also all laughed at the name "mini" for this, it was very much a full size dessert, 2.6" round, nearly 400 calories.

**+.

Coconut Mango Passion (Mini Round).

"Layers of mango-passionfruit mousse, coconut mousse, coconut sponge."

One co-worker loves all things tropical, so I ordered the Coconut Mango Passion one next.  I did not enjoy this.

The cake was fairly light and moist but dry at the same time.  The mango passionfruit mousse was just flavors I don't like, fairly fake tasting.  The coconut mousse on top was *really* strange, airy, almost like meringue.  The shredded coconut on top was a horrible texture, mushy.

**.

White Chocolate Raspberry (Bite Sized).

"Layers of raspberry and white chocolate mousse, hibiscus glaze and crushed pistachio, vanilla sponge."

And finally, one that sounded good to me, white chocolate raspberry.  This one wasn't horrible, but it certainly wasn't good.

The layers of sponge cake were fairly moist, but otherwise lackluster.  The raspberry mousse was at least fruity, but the white chocolate mousse was just plain and sweet.  Given the equal ratio of cake to mousse, it wasn't really possible to enjoy the mousse.  The glaze on top was a bit gummy, and the pistachios were soggy and lacked crunch.

I extracted a little mousse, and had a decent bite that way, but otherwise, meh.

**+.

Mini Cakes

I really don't understand what is different about the "mini cakes" versus the individual round paves, except that they are *slightly* bigger, 3 inches in diameter rather than 2.6.  Anyway, they have their own menu category.

Marquise au Chocolat.

"Chocolate mousse, chocolate ganache, baked hazelnuts, chocolate leaf."

Another chocolate option, the fancy sounding Marquise au Chocolate.

As I mentioned, these look exactly like slightly larger versions of the round individual paves.  Our catering staff cut them in half to make more reasonable portion sizes, which also help me easily show a cross-section of the layers.  Inside, it was also quite similar to the Chocolate Ganache round.

The base and middle layer were chocolate cake, light brown.  It was dry and very lackluster, just like I saw with the other items.  I suspect it was actually the exact same cake.

The layers adjacent to the cake were a thick, dark chocolate ganache.  Again, basically the same as the Chocolate Ganache round.  It was rich, it was chocolate, it was creamy, but it wasn't particularly interesting.

The aspect of this that was different from the previous pave is the top layer, a softer chocolate layer, I guess a mousse.  A bit lighter, fluffier.  It was my favorite of the layers, but still, nothing very notable.

The hazelnuts on top were strangely soft.

Overall, this just didn't impress me, and the dry cake ruined it, but my co-workers enjoyed it.

**+.

Macarons

The French Patisserie makes 2 styles of macarons: "macarons de paris", standard 1.5" diameter macarons, and "grandoise", huge  2.5" giant macarons.

"2 almond meringue cookies,  crunchy on the outside, while moist, chewy, and flavourful on the inside."

I tried the giant ones, available in 4 flavors: chocolate, vanilla, raspberry, and pistachio, even though I don't care for cookies in general, and macarons in particular.

Raspberry, Vanilla, Pistachio Grandiose Macarons.

Ok, yes, "grandoise" is the appropriate name here.  These macarons were comically large.  I mean, a single macaron is usually annoyingly small and not a "real" dessert to me, so people always eat several, but these just looked silly.

I started with a pistachio one.  The filling did sorta taste like pistachio, and had a bit of grit to it, so it likely did use real pistachio.  The cookie shells looked good at first glance, but were pretty mushy once you broke into them.  They certainly didn't fare well from being frozen, but, isn't that to be expected with such a delicate product?

I also tried vanilla.  The filling in this was much softer, basically just sweet buttercream, but tasty enough.  There didn't seem to be nearly enough given the amount of cookie.  And those cookies?  Same as the pistachio, they broke apart strangely and weren't the right texture of a fresh, delicate macaron.

So, good fillings, but, clearly a product that suffered from frozen distribution.

***.