Over the past few days, I have worked on gathering ingredients and putting them all together to create an amazing Buche de Noel. Buche de Noel is the French name for a Christmas cake shaped log. It is a heavenly flourless chocolate cake rolled with chocolate whipped cream. Traditionally, Buche de Noel is decorated with confectioners’ sugar to resemble snow on a Yule log. I chose this specific dessert because it is one of our principal’s favorite holiday desserts. Just by reading the directions I knew this was going to be quite difficult. There are so many intricate steps that you have to follow. The recipe that I followed was from the “Allrecipes” cooking website. The first thing that I had to do was make the chocolate filling. This step was thankfully pretty easy. All we had to do was mix whipping cream, confectioners’ sugar, cocoa, and vanilla. After I mixed those ingredients together, I put it in the fridge to cool. 

The next part was easy because all I did was sit on the couch and watch tv. In my defense, I was preparing myself for the next step. Just by reading it, I knew I was going to need an extra set of hands. Thankfully, my mom was there to help with this dessert. So, for the next step, I needed two large bowls. In the first bowl, I added egg yolks and sugar. I blended that until it was thick and pale. Then, in the same bowl, I slowly added cocoa, vanilla, and salt. All of that went pretty well except for the fact that the cocoa powder was going everywhere. I think I inhaled more than I put in the dessert, but I guess it’s ok. At least I wore an apron! Then, in the second bowl, I whipped egg whites until they formed soft peaks. Next, I slowly added sugar until it formed stiff peaks. I have to say, this was, by far, the most fun part of this whole process. It seriously looked like soft whipped cream, but please don’t eat it! Its looks will deceive you. I immediately folded the yolk mix in with the whites mix. Once you’ve done that, spread the mixture on a prepared pan. 

So now, after all that hard work, it’s time to bake! I put the pan in my preheated oven and let it do its thing. I let it cook for about 12 minutes until I smelled a burnt smell. Yes, a burnt smell! The recipe stated that you need to cook the mix for around 15 minutes, which, I guess, means 8! All I have to say is if someone cooked that for 15 minutes, they would be eating ashes. So, after the little …. incident, I put on the chocolate cream and rolled it. It rolled up somewhat, but mostly it just broke apart. Then, I basically just covered it with confectioners’ sugar to mask the broken cake. 

Overall, if I knew how to actually bake, this dessert would have been amazing, but I don’t! Besides the fact that I messed up the cake, my family absolutely adored the filling. We actually threw away the cake and just ate the filling. It was very thick and chocolatey, which is never a bad thing, you know!

So, I would totally recommend this dessert to anyone that can bake. It seems so good and I wish I, actually, cooked it without burning it, but it’s ok. If I’m being honest, it was definitely my mom’s fault, but if you want to get out of clean up duty, then just go with it! If you know what I mean! Maybe next time I will take that advice because those dishes were a lot of work.   

BUCHE DE NOEL RECIPE