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?
Joanne
Sorry this recipe wasn’t a home run for you! Very creative with the candies. Looks beautiful!
.-= Julie´s last blog ..Shame on Me! No Chocolate With Francois. =-.
I am sorry this didn’t work out for you, but really appreciate you baking with me. 🙂 I have made things that went straight to the trash, as hard as my upbringing makes me cringe to do it. The pine nut turron cake we made…that was a major fail here and I tossed it. It happens. 🙂
.-= Susan´s last blog ..Chocolate with Francois – Chocolate Paris-Bres =-.
Aww – what a disappointment! They look yummy and chocolatey. I can only think of one recipe that we just did not eat at all – Alton Brown’s meatloaf. We had watched him make some on Good Eats and decided we had to try it. This is before we even lived together so we had to buy a ton of ingredients to stock Ryan’s empty kitchen. It involved grinding our own meat in the food processor. We were so excited. It never came together. It was a crumbly mess and never looked fully cooked. I tried a little piece from the edge and it tasted awful. So after all that work and expense, it went into the trash. Such a let down!! I have not had good luck with any Alton Brown recipe, come to think of it.
.-= Liz´s last blog ..CEiMB: Broccoli-Cheddar Breakfast Bake =-.
I stopped by to see how this came out. I will say everything is beautiful. It seems sad to throw away such beauty. You did it though and that is to your credit.
I love to play with chocolate but the recipes, while challenging, are too fancy for my family. I was, at first excited about the book and the very same recipes but then I saw it just was not for our family.
By the way, I started a link, weekly (Wednesdays) for chocolate recipes. If you have one, you would like to share, come on over. The link is open for six days each week.
So sorry you were disappointed with this one. It really is discouraging when you take so much time and effort (and let’s not forget the cost) on a recipe and it doesn’t come out the way you anticipated. Great effort though!
.-= Mags´s last blog ..To My Dear Readers…… =-.
How sad that this one didn’t work out for you after all that work! It sure looks cute the way you decorated it!
.-= Leslie´s last blog ..Chocolate with Francois – Chocolate Paris-Brest =-.