Buche De Noel--The Daring Bakers December Challenge!

And the Challenge this month is…

A French Yule Log!!!

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux. They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand

OK, so I'm a week late (almost), and I almost didn't finish this puppy. My ganache didn't turn out, and the whole thing was generally a mess, but I'm not a quitter, so I'm posting the fool thing. Here's my attempt at a buche de noel (French yule log). The recipe is here, and it's L-O-N-G (18 pages in Word).





This was a crazy recipe, and I LOVE to bake. First was the almond biscuit. Mine was hard. Then the creme brulee, which baked TWICE as long as they said to in the water bath (do I need to check my oven's temp, I wonder?). Next was the ganache, which was ruined b/c I burnt it, so I threw it away. The mousse was deelish, the icing was easy, and the crisp would've been good except that I didn't have any more chocolate, so I used cocoa powder and butter in the double boiler. Can you guess what I forgot? Oh yeah, the SUGAR. So it was bitter and ick. But since the rest was relatively sweet, you couldn't tell a heck of a lot. I can't wait to do January's challenge.

Since I can't tell you what it is unless you're a Daring Baker yourself, you'll just have to wait until the end of the month. But it's good!