Sunday, December 7, 2014

Baking Friday - Cake # 12

Cake # 12!  This is our last cake in our 2014 Baking Friday venture!  How wild is that??!!!  We've done 13 cakes together this year.  I will show all 13 at the end of this post, but for now we will focus on our Christmas cake....our Buche de Noel.
These are very traditional Christmas cakes, often called Yule Logs.  This is a chocolate sponge cake rolled up and decorated to look like a Christmas log for the fire.  Except you don't want to burn this up!  You want to eat it!  Buches are often filled with whipped cream or icing, but I did an espresso mousse filling to see how I'd like it.  Depending upon my audience, I would do this again.  If G was my audience, I would do the standard whipped cream filling because while he likes coffee, he doesn't tend to like coffee flavored desserts.  But I know a few others that would enjoy this.  As one tester put it, "I don't believe I have ever had a Tiramisu Yule log.  Your cake is so moist combined with the cream filling makes me think that I am in Italy celebrating Saint Lucia for Christmas."  How sweet is that description!  This same tester may be planning to surprise a family member with this cake for a birthday, so I hope I am able to share this recipe well to make it easy to follow.  This really is not a hard cake to put together.  There are a few steps, but it's Christmas!  And it's totally worth it!

This is another Helen Fletcher recipe (of course!)  It is her chocolate buttersponge - meaning a cake that is leavened mainly with beaten egg whites plus moistened with melted butter at the end.  I have made this recipe a number of times, and I like the buttersponge so much that I never make the regular sponge cake recipe!  Maybe one of these days...

Chocolate Buttersponge
2/3 cup cake flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 t. baking powder
6 eggs, separated
3/4 cup sugar
Splash of vanilla
4 T. butter, melted and cooled

I began by separating the eggs.  I simply separate the old fashioned way by capturing the egg yolk in one-half of the broken egg shell and letting the white flow into the bowl.  It usually takes a couple of flips of the yolk back and forth between the shell halves to fully release all of the egg white, but I've found it to be a successful method.

So whites...
...and yolks.  From 6 eggs.
Next I combined the flour, cocoa and baking powder in the sifter.

And started sifting until combined.

Not yet fully combined.  So sift again.
Not quite yet, so sift again.
One more time should do it.
Yes!  It took 4 times, but the flour and cocoa were finally fully combined.

So now I turned my attention to beating the eggs.  First the yolks with 1/2 of the sugar and the vanilla until pale and thick.  It took a few minutes, but it wasn't hard with a mixer.
And then the whites, beating to soft peaks before adding the remaining sugar and beating until stiff.
I poured the beaten egg yolks over the egg whites plus half the flour mixture.
And began folding.
Then I added the remaining flour mixture and folded again.
Until I had a cohesive batter.  This is where a normal sponge cake would end, but for a buttersponge we now need to incorporate the melted butter.  As Helen teaches us, if we were to simply fold in the melted butter at this point, it wouldn't ever fully mix in.  So we "temper" the butter by mixing about 1/2 cup of batter into the melted butter with a whisk before folding it back into the main batter.  Here is the batter added to the butter.
And here it is whisked together.  It may look curdled at first, but it will come together.
Then I added this back to the main batter.  And folded with a spatula to retain as much air as possible.
Finally I spread it onto a parchment lined 15" x 10" jelly roll pan, using an offset spatula to smooth it out.
I baked this at 350 degrees for 12 - 15 minutes until just done and the middle springs back with a light touch.

Meanwhile, I dusted a kitchen towel with powdered sugar.  Does anyone else have one of these old Tupperware sifters?

I've had this for more years than I can count.  It has sifted powdered sugar over lots of French Toast for growing kids!  It also makes short work of covering a towel ready for a buttersponge cake!
Our cake is done!
Immediately I flipped it over onto the sugared towel.
I peeled off the parchment paper.
And started rolling from the short side.  All rolled up!
See?  Take a peak inside the towel!

And I let the cake cool!

Filling and Frosting
1 cup whipping cream
1-8oz pkg cream cheese
2 sticks softened butter
Splash of vanilla and almond
Dash of salt
2 lbs. powdered sugar
3/4 cup marshmallow creme
1-1/2 t. espresso powder (for filling)
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa (for frosting)

I beat the whipping cream until stiff peaks.

Then I beat the next 7 ingredients together until smooth and creamy before splitting between two bowls.  It wasn't a 50-50 split since I needed far less filling than frosting.  It was about a 75 frosting to 25 filling split.
Into the filling bowl, I added the espresso powder and whipped cream and folded together.  It needs to be chilled for about 1 hour before using, but I didn't have that time, so I used as is.
To the other bowl I added the unsweetened cocoa, sifting in to remove any lumps.
I beat the cocoa into the frosting portion until smooth and chocolaty and creamy!
I unrolled the cooled cake, and yep, it tore a bit.  That will happen, but the cake isn't ruined, I promise you!  Move forward!
Spread the filling - which was a bit too soft like I said above...
...and roll it back up!
To even off the ends, I cut both ends off (about 3/4 inch from each end) and "glued" them to the top of the log using icing.
If the filling wasn't quite so soft, this would have worked better...
...but using a pastry bag and a spatula I got this log frosted!
A fork and a chill can help to give the log some wood-like texture.  And powdered sugar snow can cover a multitude of imperfections!
Right?
Some holly leaves and berries turns this into Christmas!
Are you hearing "Merry Christmas" suddenly?
So there ya have it!  Cake # 12!  And our last cake of 2014!  Celebrate!!!

As promised above, here is a pic rundown of our 2014 cakes.  Hope you enjoy!

This was our January fail....ugh...
And here was our 5th Friday Cake, ready for Valentine's Day!
Or our Red Velvet Cheesecake for February!
Then we did our Chocolate Glaze cage match in March...
...followed by our Toasted Marshmallow Chocolate Bundt cake for April.  This has been the most requested cake by others of all of the cakes baked this year for this blog.
Remember Mother's Day?
And Father's Day?
And who could forget the 4th of July when I almost burned down the building where I work?!  Shudder!
And then we entered our "Unique" holidays....August...Peach Cheesecake, but I can't seem to find a pic of this one, so I'll use this link instead.  (Have I ever mentioned that I have a lot to learn about this here blog world?!)

How about September?

And Halloween cupcakes...with bacon!
Thanksgiving German Chocolate....
And last, but certainly not least, and one more time our Christmas Buche!
Merry Christmas and thank you for sharing these 2014 cakes with me!

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