Recipe for Christmas Bûche de Noël

I drool over the beautiful Buches de Noel by Pierre Herme. Here is a sampling of this year’s lineup and an easy to make recipe below.

Each creation looks more delicious than the one before. They are cake creations of his famous macarons, Ispahan, Chuao chocolate, Montebello…

I’m going to make the following easy recipe for Christmas, substituting vanilla ice cream for the filling…..

Recipe for Bûches de Noël (Courtesy of Epicurious.com)
Filling
• 2/3 cup whole milk
• 2 large egg yolks
• 2 TBSP sugar
• 3 TBSP all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup marzipan, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
• 6 TBSP unsalted butter, cut into 6 pieces, room temperature
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp almond extract

Cake
• 6 large eggs
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup all purpose flour
• 2 TBSP unsalted butter, melted
• 2 TBSP powdered sugar
Frosting
• 3/4 cup whipping cream
• 3 TBSP unsalted butter
• 5 ounces bittersweet (not unsweetened) or semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 4 ounces milk chocolate, chopped
For filling:
Boil milk in saucepan over medium heat. Whisk yolks and sugar in small bowl until well blended; whisk in flour. Whisk hot milk into egg mixture. Return to same saucepan. Whisk over medium heat until custard thickens and boils, about 1 1/2 minutes. Transfer to processor; cool to room temperature, about 1 hour. Add marzipan; process until smooth, about 1 minute. Blend in butter 1 piece at a time, then both extracts. Cover and refrigerate filling at least 4 hours or up to 2 days.
For cake:
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Butter 11x10x1-inch jelly roll pan. I use a loaf pan. If you have a silicon loaf pan, you don’t need to use parchment paper. Line the bottom with parchment paper; butter and flour parchment.
Whisk eggs, 3/4 cup sugar, vanilla, salt in large metal bowl. Set bowl over pan of simmering water. Whisk until just warm, about 2 minutes. Remove bowl. With an electric mixer, beat until tripled in volume, about 5 to 7 minutes.
Sift flour over and fold in until gently. Carefully fold in butter (do not overmix, or batter will deflate). Spread batter in prepared pan. Bake about 20 minutes, until tester inserted into center comes out clean. Sift powdered sugar over towel. Run knife around edge of pan to loosen cake. Turn hot cake out onto towel. Peel off parchment. Starting at 1 long side and using towel as aid, gently roll up cake jelly-roll style. Cool.
Unroll cake. Spread filling and re roll it. Put cake seam side down on platter. Refrigerate cake while preparing frosting.
Alternatively, unroll cake, cut ice cream into big pieces along the cake, about ½” thick.. Slowly roll up the cake and put in freezer. (Wait a few hours and serve with soft with hot fudge sauce.)
For frosting:
Bring cream and butter to boil in medium saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring to melt butter. Remove from heat. Add both chocolates; whisk until melted. Transfer to medium bowl. Let cool at room temperature until thick enough to spread, about 1 hour.
Starting 1 inch in from each end of cake, cut on diagonal to remove one 3-inch-long piece of cake from each end. Attach 1 cake piece at sides of cake near each end. Spread frosting over top and sides of cake and pieces. Using tines of fork, draw concentric circles on cake ends to resemble tree rings. Draw fork along length of cake to form bark design. Garnish with Marzipan Mushrooms.
p.s. Thank you to epicurious.com for the easy to follow recipe. I had to laugh when I checked Martha Stewart’s recipe. 4 separate links for each part and an ‘overview from 30,000 feet’ when it got to the assebly:
Martha Stewart’s Bûches de Noël
• Chocolate Genoise
• Chocolate Mousse
• Chocolate Ganache Icing
• Meringue Mushrooms
Directions
• Make chocolate genoise and mousse, ganache icing, and meringue mushrooms. (Thank you for that!)
• To assemble cake, carefully unroll genoise on the back side of a baking sheet (discard the plastic wrap and waxed paper, but keep the towel). Spread chocolate mousse evenly on cake to within 1 to 2 inches of one long end. Reroll cake, starting from other long end, using towel to help roll it. Cover with plastic wrap; chill until firm, about 1 hour.

Posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009 at 1:34 pm in Food & Drink. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.