My Bûche de Noel

I was so excited to finally join Daring Bakers this month. Browsing food blogs has become my newest obsession since we are in the “non-busy season” at work, and the Daring Bakers seemed like such a fun group. And I am always looking for excuses to bake. I might have waited until January to begin though because I already had tons of baking planned for December. I hosted our 2nd Annual Gingerbread House Decorating Contest and Cookie Exchange. Most of the guests were my husband’s fellow graduate students who were in the middle of final exams, which meant that I made all of the gingerbread houses, and the cookie exchange was basically me giving away dozens and dozens of cookies in exchange for smiles. I love to take care of those people though, and they really appreciate it. I really wanted to make the Yule Log to serve at that party, but that just didn’t happen. My next project was making Christmas goodie bags for my whole office, so the Yule Log was still on hold.

Finally I was able to make the Yule Log, or Bûche de Noel as I like to call it, last weekend. When my husband saw what I was up to, he begged me not to make it! I think he is getting tired of the constant visions of sugar plums that have been dancing in his head all month during his sugar comas. Since most of our friends have left town for the holidays already, we didn’t have anyone to share it with, so he’d be forced to eat the whole thing himself. I decided to only decorate a tiny, tiny piece of the log and freeze the rest to serve when everyone is back.
I really didn’t have any trouble with any part of the Bûche. My cake looked kind of funky when it came out of the oven, but it rolled very nicely. I had added cocoa powder to it because I am just a chocoholic. I rolled the cake immediately in a humidified towel, then filled and rerolled it once it cooled.

Somewhere I had seen a filling recipe using mascarpone cheese and Nutella, so I whipped that up to fill my Bûche. I thought that would be an excellent way to prevent me from just eating all of that deliciousness that is Nutella right out of the jar. Luckily I did have leftover filling, so I can eat that right out of the Tupperware container! I left that to set in the refrigerator overnight.

The buttercream frosting scared me a bit with all of the trouble that was being posted on the DB blog, but I thought I’d really be daring and try to chocolatize mine anyway. I added melted and cooled unsweetened chocolate before mixing in the butter. It tasted amazing, but was a little thin – very shiny though. As I was waiting for the mushrooms to bake, my husband started hovering around the cake wondering when he could eat it. Funny how he didn’t even want me to make it in the first place! I told him he’d have to wait for the mushrooms to go on and for me to photograph it.

The meringue mushrooms were not a problem either. I have made meringue cookies before, so I knew what I was getting into. I also added some cocoa powder to the meringue mixture – this time for color, not just for the sake of being chocolate. I thought they turned out pretty cute. I stuck a few in the cake but I had tons leftover since my little Bûche was so tiny, so I ate them up.

Finally my teeny little Bûche de Noel was complete! My husband dug right in and thought it was delicious. He especially loved the filling, but I didn’t tell him about my secret stash in the Tupperware. He ate about half of log. He ate the other half the next night! So much work gobbled up in just two nights! I’m sure he is looking forward to the rest of the log coming out of the freezer next month!

Bobbie Sue