A Yule Log in Tuscany

This challenge was a real challenge and frankly my results, although tasty, were somewhat mediocre. I am in the middle of renovations to my very old home in Tuscany and my kitchen is being redone, leaving all my appliances and utensils and plates in my living room scattered about. In order to bake this cake, I had to first find the ingredients which have been placed into various unlabeled bags, plug various appliances in and set them on top of coffee tables and begin the baking process upstairs while preheating the old oven in the kitchen downstairs. Needless to say, this was tedious.

The cake was dry in my opinion, probably because I am unfamiliar with the oven downstairs and was distracted by the buttercream which was difficult since it was made half upstairs then transferred downstairs to be completed. The downstairs kitchen has no heat at the moment (also due to renovations), so while I had good intentions of running a fork over it, it hardened like chocolate instead on the top - no idea what I did wrong there.

The one fun thing was playing with marzipan..... Firstly because I love eating it. Anything almond makes me swoon. I enticed both kids to help me and we had a lot of fun. The mushrooms were cute although I have to say my fingers are still very green and very red from smooshing the food coloring into the marzipan... and the mushrooms are not really edible decorated the way they are because the little "speckles" on top of the mushrooms are actually this digestive bicarbonate grain that comes in jars here in Italy - I had to improvise, could not find dragees at my store but as I was checking out I passed the "indigestion aisle" and lo and behold, this fit the bill. I suppose you could save the mushrooms for after the cake and get a digestive in the mix as well! :-)

This was an awesome challenge. I had a ton of fun with the marzipan. The buttercream would have been better if it had been warmer in my house. Everything TASTED great and the fact that people had second helpings was a fabulous compliment. Thanks again for letting me be a part of such a great group!

M.