Fake Cake at ‘Pathetically Bland’
It’s Friday evening at the end of what is one of the most stressful weeks in Korean education: it’s the end of semester exams. Stress in my school, has been high amongst both staff and students. At the end of the evening, after a few beers with friends, and slightly inebriated, I decide I needed a cake and visited my local Paris Baguette. There’s a PB on every corner in Korea. It was an exercise destined to disappoint.
Paris Baguette – Pathetically Bland – but it looks great!
5000 miles from Paris and Paris Baguette is about as French as you can get. The franchise, the largest bakery franchise in Korea, has a little picture of the Eifel Tower on its logo and at that point anything French stops. There are only two things I ever buy in PB: one is a choux pastry cake filled with syntho-cream and the other is cheese cake. The choux pastry’s synthetic cream is second best compared to fresh cream and the cheese cake is somewhat of a lottery, I think it depends on the temperature but sometimes it seems to contain cheese cake and at others, simply sponge.
There is no doubt that in terms of visual stimulation, PB is alluring. The array of cakes in the display cabinet is stunning but they’re all totally shit and totally syntho! The cake is a fake, a fraud but I should have known because I’ve written two former posts on exactly the same topic! Fake cream, fake cheese, chocolateless chocolate, the type Americans love and mock essence additives of everything from coffee to blueberry.
The beer has washed away all recollection of former disappointments and swished aside any powers of discernment. At 11.50pm, the choux pastry tray is empty and in the display cabinet there is an absence of cheesecake. However, I’m tempted by a rather delicious looking mascarpone tiramisu.
don’t be fooled – it’s as much a tiramisu as a Big Mac is a burger
From somewhere on the periphery of my awareness, currently dulled by a few too many bottles of Korea’s shitiest beer (was it Cass or was it Hite?), something is telling me to forgo the tiramisu and go and pig out on some fried chicken but the layers of sponge between that thick, yellowy, cheesy cream filling are overwhelming. I concede.
the art of syntho-cream, bland sponge, chocolate-less chocolate, tasteless coloured powders and bits of fruit
Picking up the boxed cake, which isn’t cheap at around W21.000 (11 UK pounds), I’m struck by how light it is. And once home, with the tiramisu exposed and ready for consumption, I notice how the creamy cheese filling has a spongy texture to it. PB excel at disappointment and even the crappiest fancies of Mr Kipling exceed the tasteless experience of the tiramisu. There was nothing creamy in the cream and certainly nothing cheesy, even mildly mascarpone cheesy. In all, a totally tasteless experience and even the ‘mouth-feel,’ something MacDonald’s excel at, failed. After eating the entire cake, I didn’t even feel as if I’d broken my regular eating pattern: the sponge was airy and light and the cream filling – simply nothing – no taste with a cream-less texture.
Paris Baguette (PB), aka Pathetically Bland
©Amongst Other Things… 努江虎 – 노강호 2012 Creative Commons Licence.
Related Posts on Paris Baguette fake cake:
Castrated Cake and Bollockless Beer (April 1st, 2011)
Chu-Sok Cheesecake (September 26th, 2010)
Castrated Cake and Bollockless Beer
podcast 78
Recently, a blogger whose posts I regularly read (The Supplanter), has been condemning Korean cake and ridiculing its ersatz quality (Happy Spam Day). The Supplanter has made similar accusations against Korean beer (cASS and sHITE) but he is not a member of the substantial army of westerners that live here, some of them for decades, who continually berate Korean society. And I have to agree with him; Korean beer is shite and their cake, as scrumptious as it looks, is not much better.
Real beer! Beer with bollocks! From one of the many British micro-breweries.
I’m not much of a beer drink and if anything prefer what we Brits refer to as ‘real ale’ and I was also spoilt by ten years living in Germany where there is a vast range of decent pils-type lager. Korean lager never quite satisfies and drinking it tends to make me yearn for the real thing. Not only is it weak, watery and blatantly bland, but in every sip is the constant reminder of a chemical process and a factory production line.
Ss-Hite
Korean cake, at least in appearance, is certainly comparable with the fabulous creations of German torte and such delights as Schwarzwälder Kirchetorte, Sachertorte and kaβekuchen. In terms of taste however, you can expect a tragic disappointment.
German torten
Several weeks ago, I had a coffee in one of the numerous Sleepless in Seattle cafés to be found around Song-So, in Daegu. Having learnt not to coax disappointment, I rarely buy anything other than a coffee bun but when I noticed Camembert cheesecake on the menu, I couldn’t resist. Quite a strange concoction, Camembert, chocolate and cream, I thought, especially if you’ve experienced the almost putrefied, overripe Camembert which exudes the slightly pungent pong of ammonia. And Camembert in Korea is also strange as decent cheese is one of the hardest products to buy. I had heard that certain cheeses could not be imported because there were restrictions on foods with certain bacteriological properties. Then there is the theory that Koreans, like the Chinese, haven’t developed a taste for cheese or many other milk products as the climate and pastures for rearing cattle don’t exist as they do, for example, in Europe. Korean cheeses are usually always mild, stretchy and in terms of cheese, totally synthetic.
the Vienese Sacher torte
Well, the Camembert was quite delicious and there certainly was a tinge of Camembert flavour; present but not pronounced and as distant almost as Europe itself. The combination worked but the cheesecake was really just mildly cheesy syntho-cream. And then, last week, when I had some spare cash in my pocket, I noticed a complete Camembert cheesecake sitting in a Paris Baguette bakery. It was certainly very vocal and for a good ten minutes I stood outside the shop deliberating whether or not to buy it and apart from the calories with which I knew it would be loaded, I don’t usually spend 16.000 Won (£8) on a cake. Well, it was Friday and my boss had given me a bonus, so I bought it!
Camembert cheese
However, my reasoning wasn’t purely gluttonous as I’d hoped to salvage the reputation of Korean cake after reading the Supplanter’s condemnation. I was going to pen a response basically agreeing with his observations but forwarding the Camembert cheesecake as an exception and as soon as I got home took a few photos to help secure my intended argument.
Looks fantastic!
Korean bakeries are certainly adept at creating visual feasts and cakes covered in cream, chocolate and fruit, in a fascinating and artistically inspired range of designs, mesmerize and tempt the viewer. Unfortunately, visual creativity far outweighs culinary inspiration and innovation. My beautiful cheesecake, which looked like an entire mould encrusted round of Camembert, was nothing other than a boring sponge with a lick of creamy substance providing the filling and a thin painting of Camembert forming the facade, and a facade was exactly what it was! As far as sponge cake went it was delicious but cheesecake – it was not!
exposed as a sponge centered fraud
a real Camembert cheesecake – not sponge, not aerated cream, but Camembert!
I have now come to the conclusion there is more value and taste in a humble coffee bun than the entire gamut of glamorous gateaux where a thin wall of creamless-cream, coffeeless-coffee and chocolateless-chocolate hide a either a basic sponge cake or simply more aerated syntho-cream.
The simple coffee bun, nothing more, nothing less
© 林東哲 2011 Creative Commons Licence.
Chu-Sok Cheesecake
The second most important holiday – ch’u-soek (추석)
The Lurpax was back on the shelves in E-Mart and after spending exactly 9 days with a bad case of ‘red eye,’ otherwise known as conjunctivitis, I was in need of something comforting. My right eye flared up on Friday the 17th ruining my weekend and subsequently ruining the ch’u-soek holiday (추석, September 21st-23rd) as well as the following weekend. So, on the Saturday morning I had to go to my doctor who subsequently sent me to the ophthalmic hospital. Back home in Scumland UK, I’d probably have waited 4 days to see a doctor and procedures would have thrown my plans into the liquidizer. But in Daegu, there’s an eye hospital every few blocks and doctors and opticians in every block and I can easily accommodate visits to the clinic without any disruption to my plans. The eye hospital is approximately 200 paces from my front door! Just as well as I’ve had to re-visit the clinic every third day. The infection seems to be dwindling but this morning, sat in the doctor’s chair with my head in some contraption, I felt like Alex DeLarge and though there was an absence of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, it is a strange coincidence that whilst in the waiting room, this is the music that has entertained me on my MP3 player (in fact the Liszt piano transcription). Once my head is in the constraining device, a lengthy telescope-cum-bazooka is aligned with my eye. All week he’s simply looked and prescribed medicine but today he starts poking my eye with what felt like a dental probe. Then, through eyes streaming with tears and blood, he shows me a cotton bud laced in this red gunk which is the infection membrane. Then I had to have a shot in the backside.
Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) in Clockwork Orange
It was only to be expected that my infection, which suspends using the gym or bathhouse, would concur with a major holiday, chu-sok (추석), the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving, and I would imagine that by Monday, when normal work resumes, I will be mostly cured. There seems to be a ‘red-eye’ epidemic in Daegu and I have often seen it mentioned on the news. It seems especially prevalent in summer. At the clinic there were two families all of whom were infected and numerous other individuals with either one or two red eyes. I didn’t go out for several days but have since bought some dark glasses.
the ophthalmic clinic from my roof top (제일 안과)
So, after having my eyes attacked with a cotton bud, I went to the supermarket. The Lurpax talked to me, trying to convince me how delicious it would be on some toast and I would have bought it if a cheesecake on the nearby cake and bread stand hadn’t talked louder. I’ve eaten cheese cake only once in Korea and it was just like the traditional British cheese cake – the type with currents and full of mascarpone cheese. The cake is in a box and by Jupiter’s cock it looked very tasty!
real cheesecake, simple and unadulterated
It was pricey, 8000 Won (£4) but after a shit week and that cotton bud, plus I’d actually walked up the mountain before going to the eye-clinic, I felt I deserved it. I get home and make some fresh coffee and sit down to enjoy my belayed ch’u-soek treat and all the time the cheesecake is telling me how sexy it’s going to taste and how superbly creamy it’s going to be. And then comes the shock… where’s the fucking cheese? I cut the cake in half looking for it but the cheesecake seems to have lost half its namesake and comprises solely cake, extremely white, light cake! Nothing about it is cheesy and while it was probably a very delicious cake, it’s not a cheesecake and so, with a curse, I chuck it straight in the bin.
© Nick Elwood 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
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