Gateau gone wrong

It was an off-day in the kitchen. My pastry cream burned, I overwhipped my topping and I piped my puff pastry layers too thin! But somehow, this ended up looking and tasting good. Go figure. I had never heard of a Gateau St. Honore before, but it is very similar to a Napolean, except for the profiteroles {cream puffs}. Puff pastry is rolled out very thin, cut into circles and baked. For this recipe, it's meant to baked very thin and not puff up, so we weighed our circles down with mini cooling racks before going into the oven. Then, choux paste {water, butter, salt, eggs and flour stirred quickly on high heat} is piped into little balls and baked. Then {yes, there's more}, pastry cream {milk, cream, vanilla, sugar, cornstarch, eggs} is made and set aside to cool. Where I went wrong with that is that the mixture needs to be stirred very quickly, right down to the bottom of the pot, otherwise it sits there and burns.

Once everything is baked/cooled/set, the puff circles, pastry cream and fresh strawberries are layered and masked with whipped topping. To garnish, strawberries are arranged on the top and the choux paste puffs are filled with pastry cream and placed around the top of the cake and around the sides. Voila!