The Buche

This buche de noel was my contribution to the Christmas dinner we attended.  It was loads of fun to make and I learned a lot about working with genoise sponge cake.  My husband helped mightily by sculpting all sorts of forest creatures out of marzipan to decorate the darn thing! 


Instead of filling it with the traditional buttercream, I went with a bittersweet chocolate mousse to compliment the chocolate genoise.  I think you end up with a better flavor and a better mouthfeel with less work to boot.  After the drama of rolling the cake, we coated it with semisweet Callebaut chocolate ganache, chilled it, and then began decorating.

We did the traditional meringue mushrooms (filled with chocolate of course) along with sugared fir boughs, but the highlight was really the little critters.  We had a snail (this is the northwest, it should have been a slug...), a rabbit, some earthworms, and a beaver that, depending on the angle, looked more than a little rabid.