Bûche de Noël (Yule Log Cake with Coffee Buttercream and Ganache)
This version of the traditional French Christmas cake is filled with coffee buttercream and covered in chocolate ganache. See How to Roll and Decorate A Bûche de Noël for illustrated step-by-step instructions.
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Credit: Todd Coleman
INGREDIENTS
FOR THE GANACHE AND MERINGUE DECORATIONS:14 oz. 70 percent dark chocolate, finely chopped
1 cup heavy cream
2 tbsp. honey
⅓ cup sugar
2 egg whites
2 tsp. green food coloring
FOR THE COFFEE BUTTERCREAM AND RUM SYRUP:
1 cup, plus 2 tbsp. sugar
4 egg whites
24 tbsp. (3 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 tbsp. strongly brewed espresso
1 tbsp. dark rum
FOR THE SPONGE CAKE:
5 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted and cooled, plus more for pan
¾ cup cake flour, plus more for pan
⅔ cup sugar
4 eggs
Confectioners' sugar, for dusting
Cocoa powder, for dusting
Edible gold dust, to garnish (available from nycake.com)
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Make the ganache: Place chocolate in a bowl; set aside. Bring cream and honey to a boil in a 2-qt. saucepan over medium-high heat; pour over chocolate and let sit for 1 minute. Using a rubber spatula, slowly stir cream and chocolate until smooth and shiny; let cool at room temperature until set and thick, at least 6 hours or overnight.2. Make the meringue decorations: Heat oven to 200°. Place sugar and egg whites in a bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water; stir mixture until egg whites register 140° on an instant-read thermometer. Remove bowl from saucepan and beat with a hand mixer on high speed until cooled. Place 1 cup meringue in a bowl, and stir in food coloring; transfer green meringue to a piping bag fitted with a ⅜″ star tip. Working on a parchment paperlined baking sheet, pipe two 1 ½″-wide stars; pipe a 1″-wide star on top of each larger star, and then pipe a ½″-wide star on top of each middle star to form a three-tiered Christmas tree. Transfer uncolored meringue to a piping bag fitted with a ⅜″-round tip; pipe four 1 ½″-wide mounds to resemble mushroom caps, and then pipe four ½″-wide x 1 ½″-tall sticks to resemble mushroom stems. Bake meringue shapes until dry and crisp, about 2 hours. Turn off oven and let shapes cool completely in oven.
3. Make the buttercream and syrup: Place 1 cup sugar and egg whites in the bowl of a stand mixer and set it over a saucepan of simmering water; stir mixture until egg whites register 140° on an instant-read thermometer. Remove bowl from saucepan and place on stand mixer fitted with a whisk; beat on high speed until meringue is cooled and forms stiff peaks. Replace whisk with paddle and add butter to meringue; beat until smooth, stir in espresso, and set aside. To make the rum syrup, bring remaining sugar, rum, and 1 tbsp. water to a boil in a 1-qt. saucepan over high heat; cook until sugar dissolves and set aside to cool.
4. Make the sponge cake: Heat oven to 400°. Grease and flour a 13″ x 18″ rimmed baking sheet, lined with parchment paper, and set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk, beat sugar and eggs on high speed until mixture falls back in thick ribbons when lifted from the whisk, about 6 minutes; fold in butter and flour. Spread batter into an even layer on bottom of prepared baking sheet and bake until golden brown on the bottom, about 12 minutes. Place a clean kitchen towel that is larger than the baking sheet on a work surface, and dust it liberally with confectioners' sugar. Invert cake onto towel; dust with more sugar. Starting with a narrow end of the rectangle, immediately roll cake up into a jelly roll, letting the towel roll inside the cake. Let cool to room temperature.
5. Once cake is cooled, gently unroll it, remove towel, and brush the inside with the rum syrup; allow to soak in for about 2 minutes. Spread buttercream evenly over cake; reroll cake and set the roll seam side down on a serving platter. Slice off about 3″ of one end of the cake roll at a 30° angle; cut the other end to make it flat. Spread the flat end of the angled slice with a little buttercream and set the slice on top of the cake roll to create a "stump." Stir ganache until smooth and, using a small offset spatula, spread ganache over cake, leaving the ends of cake and cut top of the "stump" exposed. Drag the tines of a fork along the ganache, making markings to resemble bark; refrigerate until chilled.
6. Decorate the bûche de Noël: Place meringue "caps" on top of "stems" to form mushrooms. Dust cocoa powder lightly over the mushrooms, and sprinkle gold dust lightly over the entire bûche de Noël. Place meringue mushrooms and Christmas trees decoratively on and around the bûche de Noël before serving.
 Recipe - Saveur.com){kind=link}
1. Ganache at room temperature is too hard to spread and unappetizing to eat. It needed more cream, honey or other liquid to make it softer at room temp. I had to warm it to spread it.
2. The buttercream. So many issues it needs a therapist...
a. The recipe didn't say how to add the butter to the meringue. All at once or piece by piece?
b. The recipe didn't say how fast to beat the buttercream with the paddle. Mine was a gloppy, oily mess, and was only saved when I blasted it with the whisk again for a few minutes.
c. Barely had any flavor. I had to triple the espresso to taste it over all the butter.
d. Hard and unappetizing at room temp. (Sensing a theme here, hmm?)
3. The cake was like an undercooked pancake. And I cooked it plenty long enough. The article mentioned folding a meringue into the mixture to lighten it, but the recipe called for beating whole eggs right from the start. Maybe that's why it fell flat. Editors, hello???
All in all, a waste of time and ingredients. Only a slight warming in the microwave make it barely edible. Whatever you do, find another recipe.
Among the many disasters in this cake:
* 14 oz of chocolate for the ganache??? Seriously??? That made a batch big enough to coat three cakes. A waste. The directions don't describe proper tempering techniques, so it was not glossy, and I had to reheat it to get it to be spreadable at all.
*The swiss merengue based filling was an unmitigated disaster. The buttercream was a sloppy mess, yet when I chilled it, it separated into granules of butter with liquid on the bottom. I tried beating at high speed to reincorporate but no dice. I had to toss the whole thing and remake a classic buttercream...it was that unworkable...Boo Saveur!!!
*The butter migrated to the bottom of the cake during cooking, and the cake was stodgy, limp and boring.
I wished I stuck with good old Julia Child's classic sponge cake. Don't even get me started on the meringue mushrooms
Saveur, test your recipes, please!! This is unacceptable.
My issues:
= grossly overly fussy instructions for making the meringue for the mushrooms. I am as paranoid as they come about salmonella, but why heat the egg whites to 140 degrees if they are going to bake at 200 until crisp? Also, no instructions as to how to affix the caps to the stems. Boo, hiss. I had the good sense to ditch those instructions and use Maida Heatter's instead.
= Way too much ganache, which hardened to a rock, had to be heated to spread, and then rehardened and cracked off the cake.
= Buttercream was separating and too loose to stay in the cake well. (I did heat the egg whites for this one.)
= Cake itself was tasteless.
I expect more from this magazine.
I too had trouble with the cake. It came out flat and it was tough; not the soft, pillowy cake I envision. I used eggs that were pretty cold from the fridge. Could that be the problem?
review of each componant:
1. meringue mushrooms - came out perfect. good recipe.
tip: attach the top to stems with ganache and drag a toothpick from stem out to edge to create a mushroom gill effect
2. ganache - came out perfect but made WAY too much as noted by other reviewers ... i'd reckon two thirds too much
3. butter cream filling - was, as noted in all other reviews, awful!
4. cake - as noted by all other reviews, awful! really awful!!
conclusion - incredibly bad recipe/detrimental to your reputation and quite devastating for my Xmas dinner
was this meant to be a practical joke on your readers?
Not funny
Shame on you
i trusted your expertise unquestionably. bad idea.
my subscription runs through 2013. should i cancel? or can i offer my assistance as a recipe proofer? i'm considered to be a very good cook.
after the fact,called my cousin in chicago who is married to a french canadian from quebec and whose daughter is a professional pastry chef. they mailed me their personal top notch recipe/notes ... there's always next year.
Changes: make less ganache (about half or three-quarters of the recipe)
Add more coffee or coffee grounds to the butter cream
Don't do that thing where you drag the fork across the ganache. It looks nice just spread unevenly so there's lots of texture.
The platter in its entirety takes a good deal of time and the recipe must be followed closely. I would say that this is a more advanced recipe.
My advice would be to take care with the egg whites for both the cake roll and butter cream icing and air on the side of over whipping until they are truly stiff.
The butter-cream icing was the most amazing thing I have ever tasted, incredibly rich yet light.
In reference to the quantity of ganache; I used it all to encase to log, but there was indeed a lot of it!
Overall this is a great recipe and can't wait to make it again next Christmas!!