Well, here it is in all it's glory. Sort of. I am not thinking this is the most successful piece of baking I have ever attempted, but Mark and Matt ate some of it, and then we took the rest over to Lauren and Josh's house, and their family ate the rest of it...so I guess it has a success of one kind at any rate.
Everyone thought it tasted very good, so what it lacked in beauty, it made up for in taste, according to the tasting panel, i.e. Mark, Matt, Sherry, Jesse, Josh, and Lauren.
I followed the recipe exactly, baked it exactly (which could be where the problems are to be found as everyone's ovens are different), and still, it fell a little flat. Mark offered to get out the bicycle pump and give that a go, but I declined nicely, adding that actually this particular dessert was made to commemorate a bicycle race in Paris, hence it's round doughnut-like shape echoing the shape of a bicycle tire...which drew the comment of mine being a "flat bicycle tire...." 
Ah, well...my little cream puffs turned out very nicely and I had in mind that those (because they are small and because one could be left without any accompanying chocolate) would be Plan B should Plan A "fall" through.
I will try this recipe again, I will. Sometimes one just has to tweak a recipe until it comes out "just right." This was my first shot at it, so all in all, given one take, not too bad.
And, since you are all wondering/asking: Rum Guy liked his slice of strawberry tart last week very much. He was surprised that I would bring him a piece...put our friendship on a whole new level, it did. When I told him the name of this week's recipe, he offered to get the Peppermint Schnapps for me with nary a sarcastic comment, and I had to break it to him that the mint in the recipe was from mint leaves this week, not liquor. (I told him this week was obviously designed to keep us all out of AA for the present. He just laughed.) He was impressed that I was going to use mint leaves from my garden that I grew myself. And, just because everyone ate the whole dessert ring this week, doesn't mean, I won't be popping by today with a little mint cream puff for him...it seems wicked to tell him what I am making and then not share...yep, making new friends big time with TWD!
Next week's recipe has been chosen by Beth at Our Sweet Life and is Mixed Berry Cobbler, for which the recipe can be found on pages 416-417 of Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours cookbook. (Amazon is running this at $12.99 this week, which is down from $40, so if you think you would like to bake along each week, get thee to Amazon and order the book for yourself.) The TWD blog was written up in the Wall Street Journal recently...how fun is that?