Bûche de Noël
We had our first Bûche de Noël in Paris at New Year’s 1974.
We had spent Christmas in Britain and arrived in Paris to celebrate the New Year
with the Fouché family, who had welcomed us into their family while we were living
in France that academic year. They lived on the sixth floor of an apartment building and
had put the bûche on the kitchen window sill to keep cool. When they went to
serve the bûche, it wasn’t there. It had fallen down the six stories onto the
ground. M. Fouché ran down to retrieve the remains only to discover that the
cake, still in its box, was no worse for wear. So we enjoyed a well-traveled
bûche with a story to tell.
Since then we have occasionally had a homemade bûche for
Christmas. Initially we used a fairly complicated French recipe, but, over the
years, Anne has simplified the process by using
this
recipe for a Jelly Roll sheet cake, either vanilla or chocolate, from a Betty
Crocker Cookbook of the 1960's. This is a pretty simple cake and cooks in 15
minutes. Follow directions for rolling and cooling it.
1 cup sifted flour
1 tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp salt
3 large eggs (2/3 cup)
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
1 tsp. vanilla
If you prefer a chocolate log, add ¼ cup of cocoa powder to the dry ingredients.
Heat oven to 375°. Grease a jelly roll pan, 15½” x 10” x 1” and line bottom with
greased brown paper or with aluminum foil. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt
together; set aside. Beat eggs in a small bowl until very think and
lemon-colored. Pour beaten eggs into large bowl. Gradually beat in sugar. Blend
in water and vanilla on slow speed. Slowly mix in dry ingredients (low speed)
just until the batter is smooth. Pour into prepared pan. Bake 12-15 minutes or
until top springs back when lightly touched. Loosen edges and immediately turn
upside down on a towel sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar. Carefully remove
paper. Trim off any stiff edges. While cake is still hot, roll cake and towel
from narrow end. Cool on a wire rack. Unroll cake and remove towel. Spread with
butter cream icing (see below) and reroll and decorate as desired.
Frosting
We don’t really have a recipe for the icing. We start with a half pound of very
soft (room temperature) butter.
Cream the butter. Add one tsp. of vanilla and ½ cup of milk. Then use an
electric mixer to blend in confectioner’s sugar until you have a good
consistency for decorating.
Anne makes one small batch in dark chocolate mode (using melted chocolate chips)
and a second using strong coffee for the liquid (instead of the milk) to make a
light brown coffee flavored butter cream. Unroll the cooled cake and spread with
about 2/3 coffee icing. Slice the rolled ends off at an angle to represent the
cut ends of the log and set the pieces aside to attach later as branches. Frost
the sides with dark chocolate icing, the "bark" and use the knife tip to make
the rough bark surface. Place the "branches" on the log surface, frost the
branch ends and the log ends with the rest of the coffee frosting.
Now anything you feel is pretty and appropriate for woodsy themes decoration.
Bon appétit!
The chocolate roll, filled and frosted with whipped cream could be a snowy log.