The last of my dessert series and I am not sure if I am happy or sad. I can't begin to tell you how much I don't want to see another stick of butter, cups of powder sugar, whole eggs, broken eggs, egg whites or egg yolk - all to satisfy my curiosity. Oh and cocoa powder to -I think that I have a fine layer of it throughout my entire kitchen.
So Day 12 was in French a Buche de Noel; in English a Yule log. It consist of a very airy cake that is rolled with cocoa butter cream inside and then covered with the remaining butter cream to "look" like a log. I started with the butter cream....simple enough. Get into the fridge to chill - no worries. On to the "log" or cake. It calls for a jelly roll pan of which I don't have so I decide to substitute for a shallow cookie sheet. In my mind this should be fine and I am pretty impressed with my ability to think on the fly. Cake requires two steps: whipped egg whites and then fold in the other cocoa cake mixture. Yup, I am getting this down to a science and I am cleaning the kitchen as I go with this recipe. It is a well orchestrated ballet of mixing and cleaning!!! So the cake part is mixed and I gently lay the mixture on the parchment lined cookie sheet. Into the oven for 15-20 minutes at 375 degrees OR when it lightly springs back.......hhhmmm - ok.
I need to point out - the recipe NEVER indicates that the cake will grow.....and grow some more. This is when it becomes quite clear that the shallow cookie sheet was not a good idea. As I am sitting on the step stool staring into the oven - I keep praying to the dear departed soul of Julia Child......"Please have mercy on me and let me cake stop before it grows out of the cookie sheet and burns onto the bottom of my oven." I threw some salt over my shoulder for good luck - threw in a few Hail Mary's, the Lord's Prayer, and for good measure I turned toward Mecca just in case. THANK-YOU JESUS.....it stopped growing as it reached the end of the parchment paper. Whew....catastrophe averted. Cake appears to "spring back to the touch" so I pull it out of the oven.
Now the recipe states that you have to take a knife and go around the edges of the cake and then turn it out onto a powder sugar dusted towel. Hhhmmm - ok.....I get a knife go around the edges. Lay out a clean towel and dust it with powder sugar. I flip the cake out onto the towel and it was like flipping a 12 egg omelet with a spork. Yup you guessed it...it broke....I quickly piece it back together, but not before I leave a layer stuck to the towel and then notice that the cake IS NOT cooked in the middle. CRAP - I am pretty dang sure this is not right. But I rally on....I get the short end of the cake and begin to roll it. It kinda rolls and I try to shape it as I go. Here is where I get the brilliant idea that once I get it rolled - I will just put in back in the oven for about 5 minutes and it will finish cooking. Not so much - I started to deflate so I pulled it out of the oven because the whole goal was to cool the rolled cake and then unroll it so that you add cover it with butter cream and then re-roll before icing it. So I let it cool for about 45 minutes.
As the cake is cooling and I am lamenting how to get the butter cream into the middle - Mason has a brilliant idea.....use the meat injector. It has a long syringe. EXCELLENT!!! I will inject the butter cream into the cake - it will be perfect. Cake is cooled and I have the meat injector syringe in hand and ready to insert into the butter cream.
I get some butter cream into the syringe and as I inject it into the cake - it blows out the other side of the cake. Must have been a one-time error. So I try again..this time the plunger part of syringe gets too much air into it and it blows out the bottom on to the counter top. Hhhmm - I am sure that the third time will be the charm.....Nope; not so much.....syringe in cake and sure as shit - it blows butter cream through the cake and onto the stove top and this time leaves a nice size hole in the cake. I am now bound and determined to finish this dang cake when Chris walks into the kitchen and promptly says, "It looks like you are trying to decorate a dog turd with diarrhea." I thought that I was going to pee my pants laughing. It did look like a dog turd and where the butter cream had blown out looked like diarrhea.
Even a stupid rat knows when to jump off a sinking ship so I abandoned the butter cream and I decorate my dog turd cake. Add coconut for snow, red and green sprinkles so they look like holly berries and run a fork through the icing to make it look like bark on a tree. Iced and decorated gave the illusion that it was good, but I know underneath the icing it was a bloody mess. I was afraid to eat it - went to my mom's to watch the Cowboys game instead.
So this morning with a cup of coffee in hand - I decide that I would try the buche de noel. I slice into and amazingly..... it has not changed. It still looks, well...bad. I decide that a small bite might be in order and Grayson decides to jump into fray and try it too because "it looks pretty." So on the count of three, we both take bites and before I could count to five - we are both spitting it out. At least Grayson made it to the trash - I spit mine in the sink. It was bad - too much chocolate, too raw, and too horrible. I am confident that I will not be trying this recipe again.
I have to be honest I did have fun over the last 12 days and I hoped you enjoyed it too. And to recap:
Day One - Pineapple Cranberry Upside-down Cake
Day Two - Napoleons
Day Three - Peppermint Meltaways
Day Four - Peanut Brittle
Day Five - Polish Honey Cake
Day Six - Chocolate Biscotti
Day Seven - Buckeyes
Day Eight - Ginger Tea Cakes with Lemon Glaze
Day Nine - Egg Nog Pie
Day Ten - Chocolate Truffles
Day Eleven - Divinity
Day Twelve - Buche de Noel
I know this sounds crazy, but I am taking suggestions as to what I should go for the next twelve days so send me your ideas. For right now, I will try Christmas Cocktails and the first one should be called a "Christmas Colonic." I will take my on the rocks!!!
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