Buche de Noel (Yule Log)

It is now time for one of the fanciest things I know how to make: a buche de Noel.  And I've made plenty of them.  We used to make these every year around this time in high school for French Club, so this recipe also brings back fond memories.  Well, on to it!

The first things you're going to need are 1 C flour, 1/4 C cocoa powder, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt, 3 eggs, 1 C granulated sugar, 1/3 C water, and 1 tsp vanilla.  You're also going to want to grease a 15 x 10 x 1" jellyroll pan, line it with waxed paper, and lightly flour it and preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

In a medium bowl, sift together your flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt and set it aside.  And actually sift it together, too; you want to make sure you don't have any flour or cocoa lumps in there.

Before going in the oven

In another bowl, beat the eggs until they're thick and creamy, then beat in the sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, on high speed.  Beat in the water and vanilla.  Now fold in the flour mixture with a large rubber spatula (this is why you don't want any flour lumps).  When that's well blended, pour it into your prepared jellyroll pan and bake it for 10 minutes, or until the center springs back when touched.

Mmmmm...towel cake....

While that's in the oven, get a clean dish towel (one you don't plan on using for anything else again), lay it flat on the counter, and dust it lightly with confectioner's sugar.  When the cake is done baking, invert the pan onto the towel and carefully peel off the waxed paper.  Then gently roll the cake up in the towel like a jellyroll and set it on a wire rack to cool for a while.

While your cake is all bundled up and cooling off a bit, it's time to make some cream filling to go inside it!  For this, you'll just need three things: 1 C heavy cream, 1/2 C confectioner's sugar, and 1 tablespoon of either instant coffee (what my recipe actually calls for) or cocoa powder (what I actually use since coffee is not my thing).  I recommend using a glass or metal bowl for this and also putting said bowl and your beaters in the freezer for a little while to chill.  It just makes the whipped-cream-making go faster.  The entirety of the directions for this part of the recipe are as follows: "Beat until stiff."  Go ahead and leave your juvenile comments below.  I have a picture of what this looks like when it's done, but I don't think I'll post it.  It really will be pretty self-evident when you've beaten it enough.  Put it in the fridge when you're done while you make this next part.

We of course are going to need some frosting for this cake.  So, get out 1/4 C butter, 2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate, 2 C confectioner's sugar, 1/4 C milk, and 1/2 tsp vanilla.  Melt together your butter and chocolate.  If you do this in the microwave, I recommend microwaving for about 20 seconds at a time, then stirring around your chocolate, and microwaving for another 15-20 seconds.  It shouldn't take much more than a minute total.  Beat together your sugar, milk, and vanilla, then slowly (or dump it in all at once, like I do) beat in the chocolate.  It'll seem like it's too runny right now, but after it cools a bit it'll thicken up.

Ok, now it's time to put this thing together!  Very carefully unroll your cake.  You don't want it to break.  Spread your chocolate whipped cream on the cake, carefully roll it back up (without the towel this time, which I would hope would go without saying, but you never know), and put it on your serving plate.  Cut off about 1/2 to 1" of one end of the cake, cut out the middle coil, and reform the rest into a smaller coil and stick it on the top of the cake.  This also makes a good opportunity to taste test your masterpiece (hey, you've got to do something with that leftover bit you cut off and you need to make sure your cake is good!).  Now frost that cake!  After you get it frosted, if you want to make it look more "barklike", run a fork along it.  And you're done!  It is now ready to bring to either your library coworkers or the staff of your favorite sushi restaurant down the street from your place of work.  And yes, those are your only two options.  But it could still use a little something extra...something like... MERINGUE MUSHROOMS (see?  I told you there was a point to that recipe)!  Ah, there we go!

And it magically jumped onto a different plate!

You can also sprinkle some confectioner's sugar over this for "snow", but wait until you're ready to serve it since it'll dissolve into your frosting.  I'd also wait on the meringue mushrooms until then.  The cake needs to be refrigerated (because of the whipped cream), which you don't want to do with your mushrooms.  If they get even a little damp, you'll have a bunch of mushy mushrooms, and no one wants that.

Welp.  That's about it for this recipe.  It may seem a little long and complicated, but it's really pretty quick.  The total amount of time it took me, starting with pulling ingredients out of the pantry and ending with putting the finished cake in the fridge, was just under two hours.  So give it a shot for your next holiday party.  You might just impress someone!

Meringue Mushrooms

With the holiday season upon us, it's time to get into some Christmas baking!  And really, does anything say "Christmas" more than meringue mushrooms?  No, no, bear with me.  This recipe will tie into something else I plan to post later this week.

 The things you'll need to make these delightful confections are 4 large egg whites (use real eggs for this, not the stuff you buy in the little cartons), 1/4 tsp cream of tartar, 3/4 C sugar, 1/4 tsp almond extract (or vanilla, peppermint, whatever flavor you want, really), and 2 ounces of semisweet chocolate.  You'll also want some unsweetened cocoa powder, but that'll come much later.

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and set that aside.  In a medium glass or metal bowl (not plastic), beat your egg whites and cream of tartar with an electric mixer at high speed until soft peaks form when you lift up the beaters.  This will take a while and your egg whites will look all foamy.  Rather like that picture over to the right.

Turn your mixer back on and gradually add in your sugar, a tablespoon or two at time, until the sugar is completely dissolved and your egg whites now stand in stiff, glossy peaks when you lift up the beaters.  Again, this will take a little while.  Use the picture to the right to give you an idea of what it should look like when done.  Beat in the almond extract. 

Nothing like white on white for a clear picture!

Get out a large pastry bag with a 1/2" plain round tip.  Spoon the meringue into the bag so it's about half full (you don't want to fill up the bag too much or else it'll squooge all over when you squeeze it).  Pipe the meringue onto your parchment-lined baking sheet into little mounds to resemble mushroom caps and stems.  I recommend making more stems than caps, since those tend to break more easily.  Bake these guys for an hour and 45 minutes.  Turn off your oven and leave them in there for another 30 minutes to dry, then remove them from the oven and let them completely cool on a wire rack.


For the rest of this recipe, you might want to relocate to your living room and start a marathon of your favorite tv show (might I recommend Cowboy Bebop?) because the rest of this will take a while (are you detecting a theme with this recipe yet?).  Anyway, with a sharp knife, make a little hollow in each of your "mushroom" caps.  Melt your chocolate into a little dish.  You can do this in the microwave; just nuke it for 15 seconds at a time, stirring it around after each round.  Now spread some chocolate on the underside of each of the caps and stick a stem into each one.  Let these set for at least an hour. 

Some of the tastiest mushrooms you'll ever see!

If you want to, you can really just stop here, but as they are they don't look quite right; they're far too pristine for mushrooms.  So now take a little bit of unsweetened cocoa powder, sprinkle it on top, and rub it in to make your mushrooms look as though they're fresh from the forest floor!  Voila!  You now have a whole bunch of really tasty "mushrooms"!  Store these in an airtight container at room temperature (do NOT store them in the fridge).  They'll last for about a month, but really, it's unlikely that they'll still be around by then.  You can serve these as-is, but like I said up there at the top of this blog, I made them to go with something else.  Tune in later this week to find out what!!!

Vacation, Part 2

I finally nabbed some of the pictures that Christina took while we were in Japan, so here they are!  Let's see if I can remember what everything is...

This first picture was taken at the restaurant Noriko took us that first evening.  It's also one of the few pictures that has me in it, thus allowing me to prove that I was there.





Next up are a couple of pictures from Hase-dera, that Buddhist temple we went to visit in Kamakura (I would also like to point out at this time that Blogger is awful for trying to do any kind of picture layout):

Next up: Yokohama's Chinatown!

Now for another picture that has me in it (taken at the Meiji shrine):











Here's a shot of the Shibuya crossing by the train station.  There are a LOT of pedestrians there.  I'll leave this one big so you can really see it, but a still photo doesn't really do it justice.

And finally, a picture of a shop in Harajuku.  And yes, they sell exactly what you think they do (unless you think they sell condos).

So that's it for the pictures I'll be posting of the trip.  I kind of wish I'd bothered to take more pictures, but I'm pretty happy with the ones that I did get.  Maybe the next time I go (here's hoping for 2013!) I'll have a better camera and I'll, you know, actually use it.