Yule Log Anyone?

It’s that time…the reveal of the month’s Daring Baker challenge and this month was a Buche Noel, or Yule Log. 

I wrote this post last night, finishing at nearly midnight after taking a red eye to the East Coast to spend the holidays with my sister’s family and our mother, and after an entire day of what families do when they haven’t been together in a while.  And our family is a doozie.  Seriously.  You have absolutely NO idea.

Where was I?  Oh, yes.  It was a VERY long day.  But my post was finished using someone else’s computer (you know how that is, right?) and I had planned ahead, so my photos were already on flickr, but kept private until the big day.  Um…that would be today.  And then when I began to load the photos, the computer reset itself.

And my post was gone.  But yanno?  It was no big deal.  Sometimes, life is just too confusing to sort it all out.  But to be the involved Daring Baker that I try to be, and to say a very BIG THANK YOU to my niece, Ashley who loves to cook, and who was helping me so much the day I made the Yule Log, I felt compelled to at least link to flickr so that you can see the photographs.  So I apologize that there isn’t much more than this.

The chocolate and nut decorations are courtesy of my fifteen-year-old son, and the candied cranberries and fresh rosemary are an idea I got from Martha Stewart’s Christmas cookbook.

The kids helping make this was the best part of the challenge.  I was afraid it would be something I wouldn’t care for and that is exactly what happened.  The chocolate and nuts on the exterior and the chocolate mousse in the center weren’t enough to disguise the taste of the coffee in the buttercream.  Although I love coffee, for some reason, I only love it in a cup.

Oh well.  I tried.

To see the photos, go to flickr.

And have an absolutely lovely holiday!