Given the subject matter of this post and that it’s now the beginning of February, I suppose this post comes a little bit en retard. Then again, since this is the first post I’ve made on this blog in a little less than two years, a month and a half isn’t so bad! Once again I’ve resolved to begin working on posting here again (at long last). Hopefully this time sticks a little bit better than the last.

For my return I’ll be detailing a recent foray into cake making that I enjoyed rather thoroughly. Recipes included!

This year my dear friend decided to throw her boyfriend a surprise birthday party. The party was going to be a dessert and drinks party, following their evening out and we were encouraged to bring some sort of dessert or drink to add to the spread. Since making cakes is among my most favorite activities, I immediately knew I wanted to go in that direction. However, I had a few small challenges to overcome.

Firstly the friend in question is allergic to gluten. So right off the bat that makes the whole cake process a little bit more difficult. I didn’t have a heck of a lot of time to be tinkering around and experimenting with different gluten free flour blends to try and produce something along the lines of a traditional birthday cake. Plus I also had the task of making desserts for several other engagements that week, wanted to keep things fresh and interesting and also produce something fairly fun in the presentation department. So, kind of a lot of criteria.

In the end my inspiration came from the simple fact that the birthday gentleman was born on the winter solstice–otherwise known as Yule to those pagans and exceedling old fashioned individuals out there. So, what better than to make a Bûche de Noël– or as it would be called in English, a Yule log cake?

The Bûche de Noël is a traditional French Christmas time dessert which is basically a giant jelly-roll-esque confection usually made from some sort of sponge cake filled with cream or mousse or fruit, rolled up, frosted and decorated to look like a literal log.  You can google the phrase and find some fine examples that range from from the ultra realistic to the abstract, all beautiful in their own right, so in respect to presentation I had quite a lot to work with. The best part was though, in addition to being pretty awesome to look at, the Bûche de Noël can be made completely gluten free, so it really fit all my criteria to make it the perfect cake for this event.

I chose to make a chocolate sponge for my cake, namely because making a  chocolate sponge doesn’t actually require any flour, just eggs, chocolate and sugar, eliminating the most difficult element of making a cake in this case. I filled the sponge with white chocolate mousse, and finished it with chocolate ganache frosting. I also made some Martha Stewart approved meringue mushrooms with which to decorate, covered the whole thing in powdered sugar ‘snow’ and spruced it up a bit with some real greens, berries and pine cones gleaned from nearby woods.

Sadly, in the end I didn’t get a great photograph of the finished product but I’m sure the picture below is quite good enough to give someone a reasonable idea of how it turned out. Photographs aside though, the party and cake were quite enjoyable. The cake was chocolatey and delicious and we managed to thoroughly terrify the pants off of the birthday gentleman upon his arrival. Successes all around!

Bûche de Noël

Chocolate Sponge:

1/4 cup plus tbs granulated white sugar

6 room temperature eggs, separated

1 tsp pure  vanilla extract

3/4 tsp cream of tartar

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 17″x12″ sheet pan and line it with parchment paper. Butter the parchment and dust thoroughly with cocoa powder.

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler over medium low heat. When the chocolate is melted, remove from the heat and set aside to cool.

Meanwhile separate the eggs into two bowls, yolks in one, whites in the other. Add 1/4 cup of the sugar to the bowl with the egg yolks and beat until it is light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla extract, and after scraping down the sides of the bowl beat in the cooled melted chocolate and mix until combined.

Beat the whites in a separate bowl until they are foamy and then add the cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Beat in the remaining 2 tbs of sugar until stiff peaks form.

Fold the egg white mixture into the egg yolk mixture in two parts, beginning first with a small amount of egg white followed by the remaining whites. Mix only until just incorporated, avoiding over-mixing.

Spread the finished batter evenly into the prepared sheet pan and bake until the cake is slightly puffed, has lost is shine and springs back when gently pressed. It should take about 15 minutes. (Be sure not to overcook this one, or it will end up like a giant horrible chocolate-egg cracker. You will not be able to roll it, and it will feel like a disaster. My first attempt turned out this way and it was  awful.)

When the cake is finished, remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool covered with a clean and slightly damp towel to see that the cake retains its moisture which is essential for rolling.

Chocolate Ganache Frosting

12 oz bittersweet chocolate

3/4 cup heavy cream

2 tbs corn syrup

Chop the chocolate and place in a large bowl. Heat the cream over medium heat until it is just boiling, then pour over the chocolate. Let the chocolate and cream stand for three minutes before stirring. When smooth, add the corn syrup. Chill for 15 minutes or so until the mixture reaches a spreadable consistency.

White Chocolate Mousse

1/2 tsp unflavored gelatin

1/2 tbs water

1/2 cup chilled heavy cream

2 tbs Gran Marnier

2 large egg yolks

2 tablespoons sugar

1/8 tsp salt

4 oz white chocolate. 

This one is a rather bowl-heavy recipe, but I thought it was well worth the effort. I suggest the mousse be made the day before the rest of the cake parts to allow time for it to set, otherwise it might be rather runny and not at all useful.

To begin, melt the chocolate using a double boiler, and set aside

In a small bowl, sprinkle the gelatin over the water and set aside.

In another bowl, beat the cream until it is softly whipped. Set this aside in the refrigerator to chill until needed.

In yet another small bowl, microwave the Gran Marnier until it’s hot. Stir this into the softened gelatin.

In a fourth bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar and salt at a high speed until they are pale and thickened. Add the Gran Marnier/gelatin liquid, followed by the melted chocolate. Using a rubber spatula fold in the whipped cream in two parts.

Refrigerate the mousse for at least for hours or overnight.

Once you have all these parts ready, it’s time to assemble! This part is a little tricky, and you must be quite careful to make sure that the chocolate sponge doesn’t crack too much while you’re rolling it.

When the cake is cool, spread it over with the white chocolate mousse.

Once filled, you roll your cake one of two ways: the long way, or the short way. (The short way will result in a short-ish, fat Yule log. The long way, which I chose, gives you a long log that can be cut and reassemble strategically to create decorative ‘limbs’. However, a limbless cake will taste just as good as one with limbs so unless you’re quite presentation minded like myself, it’s not a requirement. I hope to edit this post later on with a diagram of what I did to make my ‘limbs’) Use the parchment paper to help you roll, and make sure the cake is rolled tightly. Place the cake seam-side down on your serving platter.

Frost the outside with the chocolate ganache. It’s not really necessary that you be very neat with this frosting unless you want to, on account of the object is really to create a surface that looks something like bark. You can even score the surface once the ganache is set to make it look really rough.

To finish your cake you can dust it with powdered sugar and make meringue mushrooms like I did, with added natural greens and pinecones. Perhaps you could craft little birds or snails or what have you out of marzipan or gum paste. The possibilities are really quite endless. Look around the internet for ideas, or maybe even use it as an excuse to take a nice walk outdoors to find inspiration in nature.