Buche de Noël by janiebakes

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Buche de Noel
Submitted by janiebakes on August 04, 2004 at 7:15 am

DESCRIPTION
Buche de Noel

SUMMARY
Yield 0 File under Holiday & Party Recipes

INSTRUCTIONS
This recipe comes from my High School French teacher ( Bonjour Monsieur Guittard!) We were to translate the recipe and would get extra credit for baking the cake and bringing it to class.
I only make this cake at Christmas time so I pull out all the stops, use the best butter and chocolate, take time to sift the flour befoe measuring and then sift all the dry ingredients together three times.
Make the cake the day before you need it. Let it cool overnight and frost and decorate the day it will be served. The frosting is very rich and the cake should be served in thin slices. If you use eggs in the frosting, the leftovers must be refrigerated. If you leave out the eggs, room temperature is fine. I usually leave the eggs out.
If you don't have a linen tea towel to roll up the cake you can use a sheet of parchment paper.
There is no salt in this recipe. European baking has two camps about salt in pastries and this recipe comes from the "no salt" camp.

1 cup cake flour
1/4 cup cocoa
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/3 water
1 teaspoon vanilla
sifted confectioner's sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9x13 pan, line with parchment paper and grease the paper. Sift the cake flour, cocoa, and baking powder together, set aside. Beat the eggs until stiff and lemon colored. Add the sugar one tablespoon at a time, beating until the mixture is very thick. Stir in the water and vanilla. Gently fold in the flour mixture. Spread the batter in the prepared pan, smoothing it level with a spatula. Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Do not over bake! Remove pan from the oven. Sift confectioner's sugar onto a linen tea towel. Turn the cake out onto the tea towel and peel off the paper. Roll up at once, rolling the towel with the cake. Let the cake cool.

2 cups confectioner's sugar
2 eggs (optional)
1/4 cup milk
1 or 2 Tablespoon instant espresso powder dissolved in a little hot water.
4 squares unsweetened chocolat melted
1 cup unsalted butter softened

Combine ingredients in the order given. Beat at high speed until well combined. The frosting will change from a dark brown somewhat curdled looking mass to a light brown smooth frosting. It will probably be too soft to spread. Place over a bowl of ice and stir until it is the right consistency or put in the refrigerator until quite firm. Beat lightly until soft.

2 squares of unsweetened chocolate.

Melt the chocolate in the microwave or over hot water and spread it as thinly as possible with a rubber spatula onto a sheet of parchment paper, foil or a Silpat. Put into freezer until very brittle. Bend the paper or foil or Silpat until the chocolate cracks into pieces. I like to break it into long shards. Do this just before you are ready to place the bark onto the cake.

Gently unroll the cake and remove the tea towel. Don't worry if the cake cracks, the frosting will cover it all up. Spread a little frosting over the whole cake and roll it up again. Place seam side down. Now, you can frost it using a star tip making rows from end to end; ( Don't make stars, just pipe out a strip of frosting) or just slather on the frosting and place the chocolate shards on top to resemble bark. Gild the lily and sprinkle confectioner's sugar on top to resemble snow. Meringue mushrooms are tradional decorations for this cake, just scatter on the serving platter. I also make frogs etc out of marizipan and leaves and acorns out of chocolate. You can find molds for these at cake decorating stores.

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