Buche de Noel (Yule-log) recipe and a giveaway!!

Hi All!!! Hope all my readers, friends and followers are keeping happy and healthy! After a very long and regretful break from blogging, I am back with a wonderful Yule-log creation from last year's Christmas meal. The break from blogging was not planned at all, it just got long as a combined result of a busy work schedule and no free time! But I am glad that I am back and I am excited to share this recipe and images with you all.

Also, I am excited to announce that in a week, my blog will turn 4 years old! Happy Birthday dear blog!! If you love my blog and is a regular reader, please leave me a message on this post, and I will be awarding two lucky winners a modest $15 gift card of your choice from Target/Home Goods/Michaels/Amazon as part of my blog's 4th Birthday celebrations.  I will choose the winners on Feb 12th and the winners will be chosen in a random lucky draw. Please leave your email id as part of your comment.

This recipe for the assembled  yule-log was compiled from two different websites. The raspberry chocolate sponge cake recipe was taken from  joyofbaking, but the actual recipe is by Rose Levy Beranbaum's 'Cake Bible'. The website also had a recipe for yule-log, but I wanted to make a dressed up yule-log, with the textured bark look, completed with mushrooms and beautiful holly leaves and berries.

I found what I was looking for in this post. I loved how textured the surface looked, and also since it had directions of making marzipan mushrooms, rather than meringue mushrooms, I was ecstatic!!

Let me tell you that it makes for a very light and airy dessert!!! The actual sponge cake roll was very light, and not dense at all. The cake was the "melt-in-your-mouth" kind and using raspberry whipped cream as filling finished it off perfectly. It was not an extremely sweet dessert either. In the end, it left you feeling good, and satisfied. The chocolate ganache bark would give a little bit of sweetness to the log, but since I used bittersweet dark chocolate, it didn't add a lot of sweetness! The marzipan mushrooms added a fun look to the log, and the holly leaves and berries made from fondant, added a splash of color to the ultimate christmas dessert!!! It definitely was fun and easy to make this dessert and I enjoyed every single minute of it!

Try this yule log and you will be sure to impress your guests. I baked and filled the sponge cake the day before the party. I made the ganache on the day of the party, let it cool slightly in the fridge (keep a watchful eye, if its too think, it will be hard to spread). I spread the slightly thickened ganache on the cool log, and as it set a little bit, marked the surfaces (drag the tines of the fork along the length of the log) with a fork, to create the texture. The holly leaves were made from fondant, cut out with a petal cutter, and then the edges were cut using a piping tip to make it shaped like holly leaves. The berries were made out of fondant as well. Assemble the log and sprinkle some confectioner's sugar using a sieve to resemble freshly fallen snow to complete the look.

Hope you all enjoyed the post and the tips! Don't forget to leave a comment, to be one of the two lucky winners of my blog's 4th birthday giveaway!! I hope to keep writing and to receive the support of all my readers!!

Enjoy the superbowl, and have a great week ahead!