Eclairs & Gourmandises
Cake Banane Spéculoos – Mashed Banana Bread with Caramel, Speculoos Cream, Speculoos Cookie
Caramel au Beurre sale
Façon Paris-Brest
Façon Saint-Honoré
Having already paid visit to the Gare du Midi Market, plans intent on staying south of the city where a 20K race promised to further compromise Brussels’ already slow-moving traffic, it was to the original Uccle location of Eclairs & Gourmandises that the GPS was pointed and arriving just a few minutes after the 09h00 Sunday opening the elegant lineup of goods was every bit as tempting as rumors had suggested, the service far more English fluent than other local patisseries with a young man and woman both happy to help navigate a wide selection of items guaranteed to leave guests smiling.
Recently launching a second shop downtown, the prices and quality both making for something that seems very likely to find its place amongst tourists just as it has with locals, Eclairs & Gourmandises features clean lines that compliment the collection of choux-based elongated sweets as well as savories while a collection of small cakes and macarons appear every bit as tempting.
Offering a surprisingly wide variety of options, everything from shrimp or chicken to tropical fruits, nuts or pure chocolate used to fill the choux, choices at ‘E&G’ are the sort that at first seem to require careful deliberation, but in reality a small tasting of four items showed each to be so elegant in terms of taste and texture that the more likely fact is that simply closing one’s eyes and pointing would be likely to yield a winner, yet as great as eponymous items are the best bites were actually found in a €9 loaf that is large enough to be split amongst a group…though that is not saying sharing is ‘necessary.’
Well priced for the craftstmanship involved, each Éclair around €4 depending on if guests choose to eat in or take their selections to the streets, tasting began with two riffs on French classics, the Brest offering light hazelnut cream amidst the crisp yet smooth pastry while the Saint-Honore featured both cream and custard plus a crystallized sugar coated orb that was absolutely textbook with a crispy graham cracker sort of base.
Thoroughly impressed by first bites, the salty caramel adhering to an equally high standard with the filling striking a delicate balance of being soft and sticky without being runny, it was finally here that first bites were cut from the Cake Banane Spéculoos, and although the topping was indeed a beautiful flavor matching Belgium’s signature cookie with a light spread of the same it was actually the texture of the bread itself that sent tastebuds soaring, the mashed bananas at times falling into the background of spiced bread while other sections featured pockets of stewed fruit that not only varied the texture, but also worked brilliantly with the cookie butter’s complexity.
www.eclairsetgourmandises.com/