Another birthday to celebrate at a cost

It's is our Brazilian medical student researcher's birthday!! Well actually tomorrow is but since that would be a weekend it means we have an excuse to get a cake today!  Yay!  The mentor of the student happily volunteered to pick up something from one of the better bakeries in Providence.  Pastiche is a bakery and cafe located in the Italian American Federal Hill part of PVD and is very popular. It was supposedly very popular in the afternoon, as was the whole of Federal Hill, when the cake was bought but that's what a nice day will get you.

The birthday girl and something to celebrate with!

One of the better places in Providence!

It was a good choice!

As lovely as always!

Mentor and mentee ready to sever it up!

We ended up with one of Pastiche's signature fruit tarts. These are always very good.  The fruit is fresh, the pastry cream in which the fruit sits is very light and not starchy at all.  The pastry bottom is not at all dense adding to the lightness of the tart overall. It makes it a lost easier to eat.  Furthermore they have a good selection of fruit added that is usually very artfully displayed.  This one had the usual strawberries and kiwis. In addition there were also blueberries, raspberries, grapefruit and mango slices. If they had tossed in something purple we would have had the rainbow flag!  Truth be told these are always quite lovely.  What is not so lovely any more is the price of this thing.  It is up to $45.00. That is a lot of money for a cake which is something that is going to disappear rather quickly given its size.  But we won't grumble given that it is for someone's natal day.

Good looking tart but getting a little pricey at $45.00

As another treat our birthday girl was serenaded with several versions of Happy Birthday in Spanish and Portuguese thanks to the computer of one of our colleagues. We also gave her our own butchered version live and unplugged.  How could she not love it!

In contrast the birthday songs were free!