Flourless Chocolate Torte

For my first recipe I chose to bake a flourless chocolate torte because it is on the front cover of the book, so it looks pretty and I thought it must taste good as well. Also, I never knew you could make a cake without flour, so I was very interested in seeing how this would turn out!

"Ingredients:
Unsweetened cocoa powder (for dusting)
10 ozs bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
3/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into 6 pieces, plus extra for greasing
5 large egg yolks
1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp dark rum or brewed espresso (optional)
1 tsp vanilla extract (essence)
Pinch of salt
3 large egg whites, at room temperature

Chocolate glaze:
1/2 cup butter, cut into 4 pieces
8 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
2 Tbsp light corn syrup"
(Dodge 10).

At the beginning of this recipe I was instructed to line the pan with parchment paper. I didn't understand why at the time, but at the end of the recipe, after baking, I was instructed to flip the torte upside down onto a plate to cool (Dodge 10). As I was doing this, I noticed how easy it was due to the parchment paper preventing the cake from sticking to the sides of the pan. This taught me a valuable lesson that parchment paper can make baking cakes so much simpler! It reminds me of cupcake liners and how they make baking cupcakes easy. Parchment paper, to me, is like cupcake liners for cakes and other desserts. The torte tasted alright after adding the glaze, but it definitely looked better than it tasted.

Question: Have you ever baked something that looked or sounded great, but didn't taste very good? How about it looked awful but tasted great?
Citation: Dodge, Abigail Johnson. Dessert. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Print.