Travel cakes, ready for boarding!

Anne Debbasch | 3/31/22

Designed at the beginning of the last century to be perfectly nomadic, these cakes with no perishable fillings can be kept for several days at room temperature and transported anywhere without melting or crumbling. While the function may have changed, now that we're all nomads, the taste for these cakes has remained.

In 1900, at the Universal Exhibition in Paris, Félix Bonnat created his first travel cake, a plum-cake soaked in rum and incredibly long-lasting. In the 1960s, "Papy" Brossard scored a master stroke with his famous Savane marble. Artisan chocolates first appeared in the 1980s, with Pleyel by Robert Linxe, founder of La Maison du Chocolat, and Guayaquil by Jean-Paul Hévin a few years later. Today, every artisan patissier has his own. Let's take a look at some of these "travelling cakes"!

Nicolas Bernardé, La Garenne-Colombes

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Mr. Cakissime! Meilleur ouvrier de France, Nicolas Bernardé is renowned for his unmissable seasonal travel cakes, conceived as pastries, for which he imagines a new version every week.

Choose the "pocket cake" variant, finger cakes presented in a metal box, easy to unwrap, eat and slip into your pocket: lemon-poppy seed, pistachio-chocolate-raspberry or chocolate-caramel.

2, place de la Liberté, 92250 La Garenne-Colombes.

www.nico las-bernarde.com

Morihidé Yoshida, Paris

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Patissier Morihidé Yoshida makes incredibly tasty laser cakes, with vanilla, lemon, salted butter caramel or maple syrup. Their supple, melt-in-the-mouth, airy texture is reminiscent of chiffon cakes. We love their thin, sweet, crunchy layer, their perfect visual appeal and a fragrance that will melt even the most reluctant.

We're particularly fond of the maple syrup cake!

65, avenue de Breteuil, Paris 7e.

www.mori yoshida.fr

Desty Brami, Ferrières-en-Brie

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Executive pastry chef at Château de Ferrières, he opened his first boutique, Madeleine by Ferrières, in January 2022, where you can discover his creations, including his travel cakes. Lemon, vanilla, chocolate, orange marmalade, marble or banana-gianduja cakes, there's something for everyone.

Let's go for the ultra-moist vanilla-chocolate marble cake coated with crispy praline ganache.

1, avenue Joseph-Paxton, 77164 Ferrières-en-Brie.

www.made leinebyferrieres.fr

Fabrice Gillotte, Dijon

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Fabrice Gillotte, Meilleur ouvrier de France Chocolatier-Confiseur, has been creating "travel sweets" since the mid-1990s, adapting to changing consumer trends. Somewhere between a real pastry, a large chocolate bonbon and an elegantly draped cake, the cake is available in chocolate, hazelnut or caramel versions.

We love the Piedmont hazelnut version, topped with a thin layer of crêpes dentelles and a creamy Piedmont hazelnut ganache... unless you're tempted by all three!

21, rue du Bourg, 21000 Dijon.

www.fabr icegillotte.com

Pierre Chauvet, Aubenas

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After Fondanlithique, his signature chocolate travel cake with chestnut flour and Ardèche chestnuts, praliné cake with chocolate rocher and caramelized hazelnutses and the dark chocolate cake with intense chocolate ganache, the patissier-chocolatier is unveiling a brand-new creation for spring, featuring Brazilian red Iapar coffee and praline, topped with a milk chocolate, coffee and chopped almond ganache. Don't wait to try it!

42, boulevard Gambetta, 07200 Aubenas.

www.pierrechauvet.com

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