The centerpiece of my family’s Christmas (dessert) table was a Buche de Noel, or French yule log cake, courtesy of Napa Valley’s Perfect Endings bakery. The cake’s description in Williams Sonoma’s holiday catalog was just too mouth-watering to ignore, so we summoned the delicacy in its dry-ice-cooled and bubble-wrap-protected glory from the Left Coast. It lived in the freezer after its arrival, and then thawed in the fridge starting Christmas Eve so it would be ready for eating on Christmas Day. We brought it out in the open at dinnertime so it could warm further while we ate. Here she is!
The dessert was a thick roll of cake and ganache, which was then covered in frosting sculpted to look like bark. Sprigs of evergreen and white meringue mushrooms dusted with cocoa powder were also arranged around the log to enhance its woodsy design. And oh, the smell! A variety of chocolate aromas with a hint of pine floated up from the uncovered cake, inspiring the best thoughts of winter and tasted decadence.
The cake came with very detailed handling instructions (temperature of knife to cut cake, best way to cut, etc), so we attended to it with reverence. The reverence deepened into nearly-religious devotion upon eating the dessert. The cake itself was spongy semisweet chocolate genoise, which felt light and airy despite its tiny pores and obvious sturdiness. Rolled along with the genoise was a thick layer of sweet ganache. This dense milk chocolate filling complemented the semisweet cake well. The softened surfaces of the cake that touched the ganache – or, the ganache that was barely integrated with the cake! – was my favorite part of the Buche. Lastly, the surface frosting was a rich, bitter chocolate buttercream. The chocolate had a pungent bite, which was largely subdued by the frosting’s butter and cream and transformed into a smooth, lingering meditation on the depth of dark chocolate. I did not eat many of the meringue mushrooms, but the few I did enjoy melted instantly in my mouth, leaving behind the crunchy residue of sugared cocoa powder.
Since the cake was so rich, we cut ½”-thick slices; as a result, we enjoyed 5 days’ worth of Buche after Christmas dinner and subsequent leftovers. I am fairly confident in saying we will reorder this dessert for Christmases future, unless I make my own version!
In other Christmas dessert news, I must mention 2009’s version of our holiday dessert traditions first mentioned in this Christmas 2008 post. We reverted to vanilla sugar cookies this year, which I thoroughly enjoyed. They, plus the chocolate-butterscotch peanut candy and some peppermint bark, are the best holiday nibbles! And, I shall leave you with an image of the happily glazed and sugared cranberry coffee cake. Some things just taste like Christmas, and this is surely one of them.
Happy New Year; may only the best desserts come your way!
1 comment:
That is one gorgeous cake. It's making me want Christmas again!
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