Bûche de Noël (Yule log cake)

One of my favorite holiday desserts to make is a bûche de Noël. It's a sponge cake that you roll up with a filling and usually decorate to look like a log, complete with merainge mushrooms. The recipe I usually follow is from the December 1991 Bon Appétit. Unfortunately it's not archived on their web site. For our Christmas dinner this year, I decided to try a recipe in an article in the NY Times reviewing new cook books for gift giving. One of the books reviewed was Dorie Greenspan's “Baking Chez Moi” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $40) for a gingerbread bûche de Noël. I was a little nervous about the frosting which requires that you bring sugar, water and cream of tartar up to a certain temperature and then beat into egg whites until fluffy and glossy.

Out of the oven successfully.

Rolled, could have rolled tighter. I used a technique from the 1995 recipe and made a soaking syrup of 2 tablespoons each of water, sugar and a liquor. In this case, Domaine de Canton, to enhance the ginger flavor.

Making sugar solution for frosting.

I decided to do little peaks with the frosting so it looked like pine trees covered in snow.

Final flourishes.