TWD: Peppermint Cream Puff Ring

This week's recipe was chosen by Caroline of A Consuming Passion and I have to admit- I was very nervous reading the recipe. This was my first pastry- usually when I bake I stick to muffins, brownies, cupcakes, etc so a thanks to Caroline for choosing this & thus pushing me out of my comfort zone!

I was very grateful that Dorie included pictures so I had an idea of what my dessert should look like (even though I still have some work to do to get there!)  

Instead of the peppermint cream I chose to make the chocolate cream that she recommended in her side bar. That cream was so good I was worried I wasn't going to have enough for the pastry because I kept eating it out of the bowl (never with the same spoon of course) :-)

The biggest problem I had with the recipe was using my newly purchased cake decorating kit. I was having a really hard time getting the dough out so I put the rest in a ziploc bag, cut it and continued making my rings (thanks to Zakia of The Frosted Bake Shop for posting that suggestion!). After baking, the pastry didn't puff up as much as I think it should of (probably because there wasn't enough dough in the rings that I made). I didn't want to slice it in half because it was so thin, so I decided to cut the circle in half and make a semi-circle pastry instead.

For my first real attempt at making a pastry, I was pretty happy with my results & my husband gave it 2 thumbs up!