Santa swiped my Log . . .

2007

What an amazing year it’s been!

This month the Daring Bakers fantastic founders, Lis at La Mia Cucina and Ivonne at Cream Puffs in Venice presented us with the challenge to begin year two with the Daring Bakers.

Yes, not only is it Daring Baker time again, it is the start of Year Two!

I joined the Daring Bakers for the fourth challenge of Chocolate Intensity Cake. It wasn’t that it was terribly difficult but it was a radical experience for me to follow a recipe and especially a recipe with what felt like radical ingredients to me. In the next couple of months (challenges), Red Velvet Cake and the Darkest Chocolate Crepe Cake, I questioned my sanity for joining the group at all. I tried to make the Red Velvet Cake “healthy”. . . now I have to smile and shake my head. Then came that infamous Crape Cake, oops, Crepe Cake and I think it was the challenge that won me over.
Counter-levering hazelnuts dipped in hot caramel and dripping down into my open dishwasher and trying crepes for my first time ever opened up a whole new vista to me and I was hooked. Once I made that first crepe (and then 31 others for that cake), I was wild to try some savory crepes and I had a field day here.

I no longer give much thought to following a recipe to the letter any more: if it’s a Daring Baker Challenge, I follow the recipe. For this month’s challenge, the recipe can be found in two places: Lis at La Mia Cucina and Ivonne at Cream Puffs in Venice.

The Yule Log is one of those cakes that looks just fancy or different (not square or round) enough to stir fear in our baking aprons. It’s that fancy enough part that attracts and causes some trepidation.

My time schedule for December left me to do the Yule Log on the 16th & 17th and send it with a neighbor to the Annual Neighborhood Christmas Party.

MARZIPAN:
I mixed the marzipan on the 16th(Sunday). Marzipan is just almond paste and confectioner’s sugar plus something in between 3 and 5 tablespoons of corn syrup. When is enough enough. I used 4 tablespoons and got a very crumbly seemingly dry mess. I gathered from reading all the comments on the Daring Bakers blog, I needed to be careful to not add too much corn syrup and not to add it too fast. This was a little hard to knead and maybe took 10 minutes of kneading before it came together very neatly.

I’d just gotten my log ready and was about to start making mushrooms when my neighbor called me and ask for help producing a slide show for a Christmas present. In my haste making the mushrooms I forgot to take any photos of them by themselves. Let me tell you the mushrooms are FUN to make. One day I’ll branch out and make some other figures like Tartelette did.

The genoise was a dream to mix but once it’s in the oven, I could feel the panic for the buttercream to be ready. To mix the buttercream, the mushy butter a tablespoon at a time gets beaten into the 4 egg whites and 1 cup sugar with the flat blade beater until there are no lumps visible before the next tablespoon goes into the mix. The genoise is only in the oven for 10 minutes. The butter cream took me 18 minutes of heavy duty whipping resulting in an only slightly warm genoise to cover with the buttercream and then roll.

BUTTERCREAM TASTE:
What is the taste of 4 egg whites, 1 cup sugar and 3 sticks of butter: sweet luxurious butter. Add 2 tablespoons instant espresso powder, 1 tablespoon of rum and 1 tablespoon strong leftover coffee to that, about a teaspoon at a time and what do you get? All I can suggest is tie your hands so you can’t get them to reach your mouth and hope you have the dignity to keep your head out of the bowl.

Santa was in such a hurry to roll off with my log! I didn’t get a taste. (I was out of town visiting my Dad and two cousins for several days.)

Lis and Ivonne: THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I am so happy to have been along for most of this first year and am really looking forward to this second year!

Check out all the hundreds and hundreds of the Daring Bakers Yule Logs (really there are over 400 of us now) on the blog roll here.
Jenn on The Left-Over Queen, gives a good history of Yule and the burning yule log tradition.

THANK YOU to All the Daring Bakers! You make it an incredible group! And THANK YOU to my special baking babes, Karen & Ilva, you two really provide the savory touch I need to off set all the sugar!

It’s going to be a long wait for the January challenge but we’ll have Christmas & New Years to distract us.

Coming tomorrow: the house where Santa is at home!

DB December Challenge: Yule Log

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Mrs Claus: “Santa, Look, we’ve found the Yule Log for the house!”

Santa: “Come on kids let’s roll it home.”

The Gingerbread People have got the Yule Log!

They rolled it away in the night and I didn’t even get a bite! Not one. Except for a few tablespoons of that buttercream!

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