chocolate

Bûche de Noël

/ Shane / Leave a comment

And not just any Bûche de Noël, but one with Nutella mousse filling, chocolate ganache frosting, and meringue mushrooms!

The Reason:

Bûche de Noël is a traditional French Christmas desert, also known as a “Yule Log”. It’s part of the tradition that it is supposed to look like an actual log, one that you might throw in the hearth to warm your toes on Christmas morning.

Barb made one for me last Christmas as the grand finale to my fabulous dessert-of-the-month present, and it was absolutely amazing. So she agreed to make one for us again this Christmas. It is so rich and chocolatey, it will blow your socks off. If you remember, this was the dessert that had Evie fighting a massive chocolate coma as hard as she could, just to eat one. more. delicious. bite.

The Journey:

The cake part is pretty much the same as making a pumpkin or jelly roll: bake the cake, roll it in a towel to cool it, un-roll and put the filling on like frosting, then re-roll it.

Although the cake part is the amazing part, I don’t think the mushrooms can be beaten for visual awesomeness. It really puts the whole thing over from “good dessert” to “masterpiece”.

Pipe out the caps and stems and let them dry.

Attach the stems to the caps with a little melted chocolate so it looks like that dark underside of a mushroom.

Dust on a little cocoa for the final effect! Again, remember that the tradition is to make it look like a real log. What could be more appropriate than a couple of mushrooms growing up on the side?

The Verdict:

Oooooh, to die for! It’s a lot of work, but well worth it (especially when someone else makes it!) You technically could skip the meringue mushrooms, but who would do that?? They’re probably my favorite part. They look so awesome and realistic, and they don’t taste half bad either (although it’s hardly fair to compare them to chocolate-chocolate-chocolate cake!).

The Recipe:

There are four major parts to the recipe: the cake, the filling, the frosting and the meringue mushrooms. The ingredients are listed each in their own sub-section.

Sponge Cake:

(From Betty Crocker Cookbook, circa 1973)

  • 1 cup cake flour
  • 1/4 cup cocoa
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/3 cup water
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • powdered sugar for dusting
  1. Heat oven to 375⁰.
  2. Line jelly roll pan (15 1/2 x 10 1/2×1) with foil or waxed paper; grease.
  3. Stir together cake flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt; set aside.
  4. In small mixer bowl beat eggs about 5 min., until very thick and lemon colored.
  5. Pour eggs into larger bowl, gradually beat in sugar.
  6. On low, blend in water and vanilla.
  7. Gradually add dry ingredients, beat just until smooth.
  8. Pour into prepared pan, bake 12-15 min.
  9. Loosen edges; invert on towel dusted with powdered sugar.  Remove foil, roll cake and towel. Cool.

Nutella Mousse:

(combination of some Internet recipes)

  • 1/2 cup Nutella
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  1. Microwave Nutella just to soften, not warm.
  2. Beat heavy cream until peaks form, beat in Nutella.
  3. Unroll cake, spread mousse, reroll.  Place seam side down, chill.

Chocolate Ganache:

(combination of several recipes)

  • 6 oz. bittersweet or semisweet chocolate
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  1. Place chocolate in bowl.
  2. Heat cream just to scald, pour over chocolate.
  3. Let stand for 5 min.
  4. Stir until smooth. Refrigerate until cold but not solid, stirring occasionally.
  5. Whip until consistency of soft butter.
  6. Spread on chilled cake.

Meringue Mushrooms:

(don’t remember, but not Martha Stewart)

  • 1 egg white
  • 1/4 cup superfine sugar
  • 1/8 tsp. cream of tartar
  • 1/8 tsp. vanilla
  • 1/4 cup dark chocolate
  • cocoa powder to dust
  1. Bring the egg white to room temperature.
  2. Beat until soft peaks begin to form.
  3. Slowly add sugar and cream of tartar.
  4. Whip until stiff peaks form and sugar is dissolved.
  5. Add vanilla, beat briefly to mix.
  6. With round nozzle on pastry/icing bag, pipe stems, standing straight up, and caps, round blobs, on parchment paper lined baking sheet.
  7. Bake in oven at 250⁰ until dry, about 1 hr.
  8. Melt chocolate.
  9. Spread chocolate on bottom of cap, stick top of stem in center of chocolate, leave upside down to dry.
  10. Before arranging on or around cake, dust with cocoa powder.

Now that’s what I call a vacation

/ Shane / 2 Comments

We were visiting the family all last week and it was great! Plenty of relaxation, and plenty of good food. We were grilling out for practically every meal. Evie met some new doggies and kitties, we got some swimming in, played some card and board games, and even saw some fireworks. Everybody helped us watch Evie and did most of the food preparation, etc. so we didn’t have a whole lot to do.

There were some extra special highlights of the trips though:

We took Evie to see some buffalo on a farm by my dad’s house. It was pretty cool, there were lots of babies. Our fun was cut short, however, when someone drove by and threw firecrackers out the window at us. When they went off, they scared us (and the buffalo) half to death. I felt bad for poor Evie who doesn’t even really know what firecrackers are! The buffalo wouldn’t come back over by us after that.

We got a ton of fresh blackberries (mulberries? There seems to be some debate) picked off the vast expanse of pricker bushes lining my dad’s estate. I’m eating some now actually!

We did some more garage sale-ing and found some good buys on Evie clothes, puzzles and toys. This taught me a new fun game, which is checking the rummage sale listings in a small town newspaper to see what you can find. My all time favorite was one that listed “guns” for sale, but I appreciated many more items such as, “Plus size ladies clothes, Harley Davidson and Nascar.” After you’re done laughing at those you can flip over to the real estate section and cry at the ridiculously low prices.

Sara and I snuck out to see a movie to celebrate our anniversary. We saw Public Enemies staring Johnny Depp, which was good and entertaining but didn’t change my life or anything. This was only the second time we’ve seen a movie in the theater since Evie was born, upping our average to one a year.

On the way home we stopped at the Albanese Candy Factory. We have always wondered about it when we passed it on the highway, so we decided to go in and see what it was about. We didn’t do a tour or anything, but we still had a very enjoyable little stop! There is a huge chocolate fountain inside and an absolutely ridiculous selection of bulk candy, which I assume is made on the premises. We bought some truffles, chocolate toffee pecans and something else that Sara picked out which I can’t remember but was just as good as the other two. They also have free samples! Evie screamed about wanting more chocolate the rest of the way home. All in all, it basically reminds me of the Chocolate Castle, with more of a candy selection, but less classy.

Despite being able to relax, it was still somewhat exhausting to be away from home and everything. Exhausting enough that I literally fell asleep waiting for a traffic light to turn green when we were on the way home. Good thing I woke up Sara to keep me company shortly before that!

Finally, for all you haters out there (and those on facebook), I give you a goat on a trampoline: