Skip to main content

Christmas Countdown 24 ...Buche de Noel




“Tis the season for rich food - today, I'm dreaming of a Buche de Noel or Yule Log cake.  It is a beautiful sweet creation of cream filled sponge cake, lathered with chocolate meringue icing to look like a log, embellished with meringue mushrooms and marzipan holly leaves, spun sugar cobwebs and any other  delicious decoration to complete the picture of a woodland scene.
 How difficult can this be to make? According to my trusty Good Housekeeping Cookbook, from which I have been cooking since the 1970s -  it seems fairly straight forward quite easy! 
However, others far more accomplished than I say differently…. 
While Julia  [Child] says the buche is simple - just a sheet cake with an Italian Meringue icing - I beg to differ with her. This challenge takes between three and four hours and involves over forty steps. In working through the recipe I previously put together for her The Way to Cook, I saw that there were still areas of unclarity , and so I have tried to remedy that in this recipe. Julia changed her recipe for Buche de Noel several times over the years. In her penultimate master book, From Julia Child’s Kitchen, she gave a recipe that she said was just like the one she did on the French Chef - except for the cake, the filling and the icing… from the blog,Julia, Julie and I , The Joy of Cooking Revisited
 
Julia's Buche de Noel for Christmas
https://njbrown.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/julias-buche-de-noel-recipe-with-improved-directions/
 The idea of a yule log came from the practice of the medieval era when families would burn logs decorated with holly  and ivy. There was a belief that the burnt log’s ashes had medicinal benefits and could even ward off evil and protect against lightning. A French story suggests that in the 1800s, Napoleon banned the lighting of household fires for fear of contributing to ill health. Denied their blazing logs in the fireplace on Christmas eve, cooks celebrated the festive season by baking buche de noel cakes instead. 

Regardless of how ornate  the cake  might be decorated, I doubt that the buche de noel has any of the powers suggested in its history, but it is guaranteed to add centimetres to the waistline, as if by magic…. why worry - it’s Christmas! 



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for reading my blog and please share your thoughts about my blog post by leaving a comment.Your comment won't appear immediately as comments are verified before publication in an effort to reduce the amount of spam appearing. Anonymous comments will not be published.

Popular posts from this blog

Fragments

 Some days are just your lucky days - today I was very fortunate and privileged to open the first ever Australian exhibition "Fragments" by  UK  Fibre Artist  Sue Hotchkis .  Here is a little about the techniques of this amazing textile artist from her own website  ...  Working intuitively with print and stitch, marks, textures and colours are exaggerated, intensified to reveal the detail and complexity within the images. Materials are deconstructed using modern methods, ripped, burnt and dyed. Time is invested in their reconstruction; pieces can take from a week to several months to create. Whilst being aesthetically pleasing the work can also act as a metaphor for deterioration and ruin, associated with urban decay and ultimately death and loss. They evolve organically, built up with layers of print, cloth, paper, and stitch into three-dimensional abstract forms that hover between object and image; to create a unique, visual and tactile lan...
Post a Comment
Read more

"Temari Or Not Temari?" Tutorial

 Background Information:  Temari (literally translated “hand ball”) is a Japanese folk craft that is alleged to have originated in China and was introduced to Japan five or six hundred years ago. Traditionally, the balls were constructed from wrapped kimono fabric remnants and silk threads. They were made by mothers and grandmothers for children to play with. Nowadays, decorative embroidered temari represent a highly valued and cherished gift symbolizing friendship and loyalty. Recently I've wondered if your don't use traditional techniques whether you should call what you create "temari". That is an ongoing debate but today I share what I do to make a "non-traditional temari".... 1.I start  with a polystrene ball ( traditionally the balls were wound  silk scraps or other organic materials) and begin to wrap with approx 4 ply wool, turning the ball as I wrap.  2. I then wrap another layer of wool in a similar fashion , this time a 3 or 2 ...
8 comments
Read more

Countdown to Christmas 7- Fruitcake Lady

from Facebook Page /The Fruitcake Lady  There are not many people who can say they showed Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise how to make fruitcake on TV. Marie Rudisill (1911-2006), known as the Fruitcake Lady was an author, a celebrated cook and a minor TV personality. She was well known on US television as a 90+year old who appeared regularly on "The Tonight Show" hosting an" agony aunt" segment, giving advice on all kinds of life's issues.  Her forthright answers and wicked sense of humour endeared her to audiences although she was outspokenly intolerant and irrationally biased. The Fruitcake Lady's other claim to fame was that she was the aunt of Truman Capote, highly acclaimed author, and this connection was used in her own writing. Her published works included: Truman Capote , The Story of  His Bizarre and Exotic Childhood by an Aunt Who Helped to Raise Him (1983)  Sook's Cookbook : Memories and Traditional Recipes from the Deep South (1989) ...
Post a Comment
Read more