Buche de Noel (Yule Log)
My friends and I have been holding a Bake-Off every year for the past 7 years, since we lived together and used to brag about our baking prowess. This year, I made a Buche de Noel, a Yule Log cake, for the 7th Annual Bake-Off. My cake didn’t win, but it was tasty and festive.
It was chocolatey and delicious. I decorated it with meringue mushrooms and marzipan greenery.
The sponge cake recipe came from the December issue of Martha Stewart Living and you can find it here. For the filling, I made the easiest filling I could think of – Cool Whip (1 tub, defrosted), mixed with one small package of chocolate instant pudding and 8oz of mandarin orange slices including the syrup. Bake the sponge cake and when done immediately turn it out onto a clean dry dish towel sprinkled with powdered sugar. Roll the cake up (with the dish towel separating it as its rolled) and let cool. This will help keep the cake from cracking when you apply the filling. When the cake is cooled, un-roll and spread the filling out, rolling back up as you go along. Place the filled cake seam side down on your serving platter and frost with your favorite frosting. I’d recommend a nice chocolate buttercream, but I was in a hurry so I cheated and used store-bought frosting and then applied some texture with the remaining filling.
For the meringue mushrooms, I used this recipe. I ended up letting the meringues dry out in the oven all night (turned off, of course). The meringues started getting sticky every time I pulled them out of the oven, so I think it must’ve been too humid in the kitchen. The ones that I packaged up immediately survived nicely.
To decorate the cake, I used frosting to affix the mushroom stems to the caps and dusted them with cocoa powder to make them look a little more authentic. I dyed marizpan with food coloring and shaped leaves and stems by hand. I included a little lady bug and some berries, too, for color.
