Tuesday, December 30, 2008

French Yule Log - Daring Bakers


This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry
and Marion from Il el faut peu pour etre hereau.
They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand.

Whew! Finally, done! I started way late - on Thursday, New Years Day, and it's taken me up until Saturday night to get to the stage of putting it in the fridge until it gets the icing Sunday morning. A lot of work!

Sunday morning - did the icing - lovely - I always wanted to know how to do plastic icing. I loved the praline crisp, the vanilla mousse, and chocolate ganache. That leaves only two elements I wasn't happy with - the creme brulee and the dacquoise, but I think I messed up there (used a tall pan for the dacquoise so it took a long time to bake and got a bit rubbery; I beat the creme brulee instead of just stirring it so I think that's why it came out a bit spongy.) Ran out of mousse and icing, so had to leave out some mousse layers and could only ice part of the log. It would have been fine in an 8x4 pan instead of a 9X5.

Would I make this again, like the opera cake? I'm not sure, but I would certainly make individual elements to put in other creations. Now that I have tasted the completed product, I shiver with delight, in spite of some of my construction faults. It is a real fancy French restaurant dessert. I think it would be perfect cut up into petit four sizes too.

Thank you kind hosts - it was a very challenging and worthwhile experience.

2 comments:

Sherry Trifle - Lovely Cats said...

I have to make a comment to myself - my log looks as though a truck rolled over it but I think I know why. I left it in the fridge overnight before photographing it - of course I should have left it in the freezer then I think it would have had a nice shape.

Tara said...

Congrats on completing another DB Challenge! Wasn't it delicious!? :)