Wonderful!

You amaze me. Not enough to actually motivate me to try anything remotely as hard (😄), but just enough for me to be in awe of how hard you work. Hope things have somewhat settled down at Chez K and that your holidays are peaceful.

Ally De expressed my thoughts exactly - wow!! No baking for me and if there was it would be something super simple. Our dinner guests tonight are bringing dessert - hummingbird cake - the Mr. does the baking. I had no idea what that was so I had to look it up. Tomorrow we're going to a neighbors and I've been assigned appetizers.

Impressive! It looks beautiful AND delicious!

Wow! Not only does your dessert look beautiful, but it also sounds delicious.
I don’t bake, not one dessert. 😱 people bring them. We end up with way too much.

It’s beautiful!!!

Lovely!

So pretty!

Presentation is everything and yours is just perfect KSWL!

I love Buche de Noel. The best I had was at a restaurant on Rittenhouse Square. I wish they made it all year. If I had enough people to help me eat ig, Id buy one. They are often decorated with meringue mushrooms.

I wasnt going to bake anything but I bought apples for an apple pie. Thats pretty easy.

Very festive!

Lovely history, kswl. I love traditions. I bet your buche tastes even better than it looks.

A lovely tradition and such a treat for you and your family!

Looks delicious. I’m going to make an almomd cake today. It’s one of the few things I bake well. Much better cook than baker.

Lovely cake and tradition history, @Kswl. No baking here as I've decided to stay home and avoid driving in the inclement weather.

Winds have really started to pick up. I'm glad I only had the one trash container to put out today. It has already been emptied so I don't have to worry about a container blowing over and spilling out.

What a lovely tradition story! I have no hopes of making a buche de noel, let alone one that actually looks like one! I have some vintage decorations from when my mother did it, once. So I was going to get one from our Swiss bakery yesterday…then DH said he was making chocolate mousse and brownies for dessert, so I think it will be too much chocolate.

We usually have risalamande (a Danish rice pudding) but it seems that not enough of us like it now, so we are ceating a new tradition with mousse, and an almond in one dish. Next year everyone will say they missed the rice pudding, so maybe this will be an every-other-year thing. And maybe, just maybe, someone else will make it!

Wow, that is beautiful and sounds so delicious. And the story/history makes it even better!

Traditions are the absolute best. As I've mentioned before, I make my DH's grandmother's borecas for Thanksgiving appetizers. I love them. I mean I love eating them. I hate making them. But I can't stop. Because...tradition! His grandmother has been gone for a long time. His dad passed last year. And his mom doesn't come to TG anymore because she doesn't want to travel from NYC to central NJ (or something). So now it's really just for DH.

I will never understand how his 90 year old grandmother made hundreds of these at a time!

This is the buche that my bakery used to make. It’s being attacked by my friend’s boys.

The cake is very light and flourless (Maida Heatter’s Sept 7 cake recipe. Very fast to put together if your electric mixer has 2 bowls.) Filling is simply whipped cream with good quality raspberry preserves whipped in. Icing is meringue buttecream and then the chocolate bark, meringue mushrooms, marzipan holly leaves.

We needed to assemble it to fit bakery boxes that didn’t take up too much space so it is a short, chunky log rather than ling and slender.

It's beautiful and I'm sure delicious. You never cease to surprise me with your talents! My Mom (who is now 103) always made a chocolate roll with whipped cream inside and dusted with powdered sugar. Reminds me of your masterpiece of "buche de noel" although much simpler.

Wow Lisa, that is a great looking buche de noel! I like the ”stump” look as a nice alternative to the log look 😁

I‘ve done meringue mushrooms and marzipan pinecones, used candy canes and truffles and most everything as a decoration. I like making it different every year because that keeps the experience fun.

Arapaho, your mom’s cake is exactly the same! The buche is nothing more than a sponge rolled up with cream or jam (or both) or some fancier filling, then a piece cut off at a slant and glued onto the rest of the cake with ganache (which is just a very thick mixture of melted chocolate in heavy cream) that has been piped on or scored to look like bark.

Kswl, the story about how your tradition started is so wonder lisaam - your version was fantastic and so traditional.

We are spending our first Christmas in France and the local bakeries (some 8 within a 200 yards or so) all had the most wonderful displays of their creations. There were even quite a few non-chocolate variations.

That's beautiul, and I love the tradition. I've never had Buche de Noel or made one, though I've always admired them and wanted to try one. Our family is heavy on December and January birthdays on top of all the holiday events, which is probably part of the reason our family always had cakes for birthdays and cookies for Christmas.

Gooster, do you remember some of the other variations? I remember seeing a gingerbread one, but all the others I can remember have been chocolate.

@lascatx I've seen all sorts of non-traditional versions: mandarin, vanilla, vanilla-chestnut, mango, tropical fruit, strawberry, pear-chestnut, hazelnut, pistachio-lemon, raspberry, praline. Chocolate is the predominant theme. They all are marketed as buche and are in a log shape, with varying degrees of traditional decoration . I noticed at least one had their variants in mini-shapes you could order and try before committing to ordering a large one.

I thought seriously this year about using white chocolate for a poplar look, and will probably do that next year Will have to find a great filling for it.

About ten years ago I posted about a Buche de Noel competition in Paris that features cakes in all kinds of log shapes with a truly impressive array of sponge flavors and fillings. Here are some beautiful buches from this year

https://www.doitinparis.com/fr/buches-noel-27054

I made one in 2022 that is not half as nice as yours. i knew it would be my husbands last christmas and i wanted to try it as something special but it was a bit of a disaster but tasted very good.

I don’t think I’ve ver had Bouche de Noel either, but these are gorgeous. I saw a story on them a couple of weekends ago on CBS Sunday morning.

The Paris contest was fun to see, but most would not say 'Christmas" to me. It's amazing what some bakers can create!!

Buche success! My mother said ”I forgot how good this is!” Everyone else loved it as well except for DD, who dislikes chocolate cake and did not have any 🤷‍♀️

Ks, wow, that looks amazing! Thank you for sharing it, along with your memories! I really enjoyed reading them. :)

This is the one that my friend’s college age daughter made for our Christmas Eve celebration. She filled it with peppermint ice ice cream. I didn’t think to take a picture until several slices has been taken and the lighting wasnt the best, but you get the idea!

I’m not much of a chocolate eater, but all these pics are making me crave it. :D

Wow, Porkandham, she did a great job! It’s all about the swirl, and hers is fantastic!

A buche with peppermint ice cream? That sounds simply delicious! One year in a wave of nostalgia I made individual Baked Alaskas with peppermint ice cream, they were delicious.

I was making a devil's food roulade with cream cheese filling, not a Buche de Noel. The thing about a BdN is it has both filling and frosting, which looks so pretty but I think is too, too.

My roulade broke so I really have a Paramecium de Noel.

I think my issue was, when I inverted it on a dish towel, I centered it on the towel. When I started to roll it, i had a bit of extra towel layer. I am not sure if that caused the crack but it looked like it did.

The only time I made a Buche de Noel, I did not frost it. I loved making the cute meringue mushrooms.

Paramecium de Noel!

Wow, kswl's comment just reminded me that I made a flourless cake once for Passover that was basically the same. Cake with a filling that was then rolled. I don't remember if I frosted it or not. It was many years ago. It was so delicious. My DH's aunt declared at the table that it's better than s-x. I kid you not. That got some laughs and some surprised looks.

I then promptly lost the recipe and never made it again. I may have to go on a search. Oh wait, I think we will be on a cruise over Passover next year. Never mind!

hrmmph. Didn't seem to bother "Sally" of the esteemed Sally's Baking addiction.

@kswl, do you roll yours with a towel or with parchment?

I usually use a towel sprinkled with powdered sugar but this year I used parchment paper. I should have dusted a lot more of the sugar onto the paper becaause it tried to stick in a couple of places when I unrolled it to fill.

I watched several videos on this subject (roulades generally) last night. One guy made it 4 times and it cracked each time. He ended up decorating it anyway but it was a hot mess. Made me feel better at least. The most useful part was in the comments on the video (numbers 3 and 4 below).

From my research, I am making changes to Sallys recipe:

1. Separate the whites and whip them into soft peaks (she had you whip the while eggs on high for 5 minutes which did give volume but I'd like an even lighter cake)

2. Eight minutes in the oven, not 16, and at 325 not 350

3. Invert the cake onto a cutting board with a towel dusted with 10x. Place the cake so that there's maybe 1 1/2" of towel on the edge closest to you, then fold it over the edge of the cake before you begin rolling

4. The roll should just sit on the counter to cool after rolling it, it should NOT go in the fridge. Assemble just before serving and freeze leftovers

In case this experience and research is helpful to anyone! I think roulade cakes are fun and will probably make more of them.

Some other tips:

When the cake is turned out on the towel or paper and cooled I make a deep score about an inch from one of the long edges, making sure not to cut all the way through. The paper or edge of the towel is then inserted into the score and then the rest of the cake is rolled up around it. This more or less insures a successful swirl and is probably my best tip.

I cook my buche in a 392 degree oven and make the first check at 8 minutes.

I use an anodized aluminun jelly roll pan from Silverwood that is the perfect size for the ingredient amounts I use, and

I weigh everything instead of measuring volume.

Eggs are room temperature (easily achieved in about ten minutes by putting them in their shells in a bowl of very warm water). Room temp eggs also helps them achieve maximum volume, and with my hand mixer it takes about 8 minutes to get to that ribbonlike custard stage.

It’s not nearly as hard as it sounds! And most cracks are easily disguised 😎

When the cake is turned out on the towel or paper and cooled I make a deep score about an inch from one of the long edges, making sure not to cut all the way through. The paper or edge of the towel is then inserted into the score and then the rest of the cake is rolled up around it. This more or less insures a successful swirl and is probably my best tip.

I saw that somewhere, altho scoring something so thin seems fraught! Since it is KSWL approved I will try that next time

I cook my buche in a 392 degree oven and make the first check at 8 minutes.

My recipe was 16 minutes at 350, but my oven seems to run hot so I did it at 325. For 8 minutes. Julia Child says 30 minutes!

I use an anodized aluminun jelly roll pan from Silverwood that is the perfect size for the ingredient amounts I use,

Yes, I understand 10x15 if the "official size" but people often misname them; just need to make sure your pan is the one your recipes specs

weigh everything instead of measuring volume.

I always weigh when I bake; especially flour! It also makes it easier to scale a recipe to your pan if neeeded

Eggs are room temperature

Everything at room temp actually

(easily achieved in about ten minutes by putting them in their shells in a bowl of very warm water). Room temp eggs also helps them achieve maximum volume, and with my hand mixer it takes about 8 minutes to get to that ribbonlike custard stage.

I thought it was odd to whip whole eggs; I saw some people separate them and I will try that next time for even lighter cake. Though I do wonder if too delicate a sponge will sag under the weight of anything other than whipped cream...

most cracks are easily disguised

Ehh, not if you don't ice it. And all cracks show up in the swirl

Yes, icing is the caulk of all cakes— thank goodness!

If a crack is just on the top and not too deep it won’t affect the swirl, but when a cake cracks because it’s too done there is usually more than one. 🙄

I thought about baking and then I was in a boulangerie yesterday and saw all the Buche de Noel flavors lined up for 25 Euro and I realized why so many just buy one instead.

We have some fabulous artisanal bakeries, but I never buy desserts there. The only time I buy from them is if I want to serve an assortment of desserts, because they offer minis of many items. That would be too much work.

Otherwise, I enjoy baking it myself.

The weekend before Christmas I made a Buche de Noel for a party that I hosted. I had made one many years ago but forgot how much time and effort it took. Mine was a also chocolate sponge cake with a chocolate ganache frosting with a mascarpone filling. Before adding the filling though, I spread a layer of fresh raspberry puree. I wish I had taken a picture of the inside after I sliced the log. This is how mine looked on the outside

My guests absolutely loved it and couldn’t stop saying how delicious it was

My husband enjoyed the leftovers so much, he wanted me to make it again for our Christmas day gathering of 30 family members. Call me crazy but I did make a second one. The only thing different I did on my second one was to use a wide serving fork to score lines in the ganache for the look of bark. Forgot to take a picture of the second log.

Next year, I think I will make this

It has to be easier.

Happy New Year everyone.

Beautiful MK!

MK that’s a beautiful buche! It’s definitely a crowd pleaser, always a hit around here.

Did you make a much larger cale for your family gathering or was it for the dessert table? My buche serves only about ten, so I’d have to make three cakes just to serve that many people 😳 I guess In a large crowd there might be several who don’t eat chocolate?

The pavlova wreaths are so, so lovely and fresh looking!

Kswl, thank you for the compliment. I did not increase the size of the yule log. I made it in a 12x17 jelly roll pan. Some recipes said to roll the cake from the long side and others from the short side. I did mine from the long side so my log may not have been as thick as some peoples. I served 7 people with the first log I made and had about half of it left over. I’m not sure how many people ate the second buche de noel that I made but there was a little bit left. My guests basically helped themselves to the dessert so maybe the slices were thin. All I know is that everyone that wanted some got some. The only other dessert I served was decorated cut out cookies.

You have a very well behaved family MK… 30 of my relatives would be flipping coins for slices of that cake!

BTW, Some years I have used a fork to make a trompe L’oeil tree trunk effect but I actually find it easier to pipe the ganache onto the cake. Your cake as is looks as good or better than either method.