This wheel-shaped dessert? GQ magazine named it "Dessert of the Year" in 2010. It's called a Paris-Brest, named for a bike race in France, the Paris-Brest-Paris. The PBP is the second-oldest cycling event in the world, and still the longest one-day event, since it covers 1,200 km (750 miles). That's a lot of riding. Closest thing hereabouts is the STP, organized by the Cascade Bicycle Club. The annual ride, held in the second half of July, sends 10,000 riders from Seattle to Portland. It's about a quarter of the distance covered by the PBP, and comes complete with food carts, tech support and an overnight stop for exhausted riders.
(Wait, wait! Friend says the PBP never was a one-day race. More like three-plus.)
Making the Paris-Brest: choux pastry (like a cream puff), filled with a flavored cream. The dessert in the picture was made by Jennifer Formez, pastry chef at Seattle's Hotel 1000, for a private, Christmas Eve dinner party for 14 guests in the hotel's Grand Suite. It's not on the menu, so I can't even give you a price.
But here's a year-end proposal to all the pastry chefs in Seattle: create a dessert called the STP, send a photo of your creation to this address along with the recipe, and we promise that someone, somewhere, will publish it.
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