Patisserie Discoverie | Paris Brest

I had been eyeing the Paris Brest for some time, actually. I recognized its name, but it was never photogenic enough to be chosen. Until today, when a friend and I walked past the boulangerie on our way home. 

At the end of the day, it was slim pickings. Few patisseries left, just a bunch of grease marks on an empty shelf. A framboise macaron with half its framboises missing. Two deformed chocolate eclairs that could actually have been one cancerous eclair. I contemplated coming back the next day. But then:

"What about the poop?"

So here we are.

I walked inside and waited as a mother paid for her baguette. Her blond baby cooed in his stroller. She took the baguette and stepped aside but did not move her baby.

The lady behind the counter made eyes at the baby. The baby looked at all the shiny colors in his new non-amniotic world. They stared at each other. After a good three minutes, they finally broke their gaze and the mother stepped in to wheel the baby away (although after that display of laser eyes I'm not sure he was a baby so much as an alien overlord hypnotizing his way through the human populace; I can only assume the mother was his accomplice).

"Un Paris Brest, s'il vous plaît," I said, pointing at the poop. Please take the prettier one please take the prettier one - my joy was short-lived, however, for when she placed her fingers on the poop not a single grain of powdered sugar moved.

I ate it anyway, because questionably edible food reminds me of home.

When I dug my spoon into it, it wouldn't move. I had to hold the poop down and wrestle my spoon into the top layer of choux pastry. It tried to slide and flip over. But worry not - ten minutes later, I was approximately 100 grams heavier. Just call me the poop wrangler (that was a terrible idea do not call me the poop wrangler).

The poop is basically praline cream sandwiched between two layers of choux pastry, and then garnished with sliced almonds and a dusting of (inexplicably immovable) powdered sugar. In fact, the Paris Brest was created by a pâtissier of Maison Lafitte to commemorate the Paris-Brest bicycle race. It's not in the shape of a poop, as we heathens call it, but rather a bicycle wheel (let us compromise in the spirit of world peace and settle on calling it a circle). 

Patisserie Discoverie | Paris Brest