This month, the group Chocolate With Francois, is making Chocolate Paris-Brest which is a “wheel shaped cake created to celebrate a bicycle race from Paris to the city of Brest.”  It is found on page 165 or our book   and was chosen by Susan of Baking with Susan.   Make sure to visit Susan’s site for the complete how-to for this recipe.

As for me, I  made this slightly different than directed.  I made the Pate a choux as detailed on page 247 of our book in the form of quarter size rounds. 

The pastry cream, from page 245 of our book,  resulted in a very thick, hard to pipe, unsweetened  mass of dark goo.

The chocolate drops, instead of making them, I purchased Hershey’s Kisses and “Sno-Caps”.

This recipe was a lot of work and a huge disappointment.

Ted’s comment was “It’s not right making something that looks so good and tastes so bad”. 

There you have it.  This was the only time I can ever remember just putting the whole thing right into the trash without trying to save it in some wild way.  By the way, the kisses and the Sno Caps didn’t hit the trash. Those were well worth saving.

I still have some of the Pate a Choux disks in the freezer.  Guess I have to come up with a super sweet, sugary cream to put in the middle to offset the lack of flavor and blandness of the puff.

Susan, I’m sure it was a good pick for most, but our two tongues didn’t quite get it.

Have you ever put a lot of effort into a recipe and it came out so bad you just had to trash it?  or …like me, do you try to save it because you feel so badly about wasting the food, the time, and the effort?