Recipe in progress...

The crêpe batter and crème pâtissière are chilling in the refrigerator. Later tonight I'll make the crêpes.

Tomorrow morning, I make ganache, spread it (along with raspberry preserves and the crème pâtissière) in between the however-many-layers-of-crêpe-I-can-manage, chill the whole stack, then make another batch of ganache to cover the whole thing.

I've never done a mille-crêpe before, but I couldn't resist adding chocolate (and rasperry, in honor of the so-rich-it's-almost-inedible ganache-and-raspberry-filled "truffle cake" my family gets from the local cake place for most of our gatherings). Maybe another time I'll do the more "normal" (pastry cream only) version.

...in which failcake may still be tasty

My first attempt at a mille-crêpe came to an early end tonight.

If I'd stuck to the traditional pastry cream filling, it would have been fine -- and the pastry cream came out quite well (not very sweet, but the chocolate and raspberry will make up for it). Unfortunately, I used too much cream in making the ganache, leading to a gooshy-at-room-temperature mix which would have been great on ice cream but couldn't hold its place in a large number of layers. As I was prepping the last three-crêpe set for addition to the top of the cake, more than one of the chocolate layers gave up and the uppermost already-stacked section made a run for the edge of the counter. Fortunately, I caught it before it made it over the edge, but several more layers took the opportunity to head out in different directions; the only thing preventing a complete all-over-the-kitchen spill was transferring the whole stack to a saucepan.

Now, here's the bright side:

When your ingredients are crêpes, ganache, pastry cream, and raspberry jam, it's almost impossible to have a complete failure. So while the intended form of these ingredients isn't happening, and while the presentation will be a bit off, the resulting crepe-layered chocolately vaguely trifle-esque abomination should still be quite acceptable as a dessert.

I'm really tempted to try this whole thing again; it should be quite doable with a much firmer ganache (about 3 parts chocolate per part cream instead of 2, and it should probably be manipulated cold instead of cool).