Bûche de Noël - GF/DF Christmas log

The French traditional Christmas cake is called "bûche de Noël" which means "Christmas log" and consists in a cake roll often filled with buttercream. My grandmother used to make a really sickly one and as kids we all loved it very much! Not being a big fan of buttercream nowadays (and I can't have real butter anyway!), I tried to make a lighter filling and went for a chestnut mousse instead. But feel free to use a buttercream filling to make it more traditional.

I used Valérie Cupillard's recipe for the sponge cake and it turned out wonderfully light and soft, I would definitely use it again.

I was so focused on eating the cake that I forgot to take a picture of the inside...

Ingredients

For the cake roll
4 eggs separated
100 g of caster sugar
60 g of brown rice flour

For the filling
150 g of chestnut puree
2 egg whites

For the ganache icing
100 g of dark chocolate
10 cl of almond cream

Directions

1/ Separate the eggs. Beat the egg yolks with the caster sugar until the colour gets lighter. Add the rice flour.

Whip the egg whites into firm peaks. Fold in the yolk mix delicately.

Spread on a big rectangular tin or an oven tray lined with greaseproof paper. The mixture should be about 1 cm thick.

2/ Bake for 10 min in the oven preheated on 180°, then lower the temperature to 150°C and leave the cake in 5 more minutes. The top of the cake should be barely golden.

(Mine got golden very quickly so I lowered the temperature after 5 minutes only and covered with foil, then left a bit longer than stated in the oven. So watch carefully!)

3/ Take the cake out of the tin and roll while hot. See on this link how to roll the cake in a moist towel, it will explain much better than what I can do! Leave to cool down.

4/ Make the chestnut mousse: whip the egg whites into firm peaks, fold in the chestnut puree.

When the cake has cooled down, unroll carefully, spread the chestnut mousse all over, and roll again. Place in the fridge for a few hours (overnight if possible).

5/ Make the chocolate ganache: melt the chocolate, add the almond cream and stir well.

Spread the ganache on the log with a spatula once it has cooled down a bit and decorate as you like! (if only I had some icing sugar to dust some snow on it...)

Merry belated Christmas!!!