Another Christmas, Another Bûche De Noël 🪵🌟🎄 -

With the motivation of making a showstopper for the big day, I embarked upon the annual challenge of assembling a vegan Bûche De Noël. And though the end result is always spectacular to look at, I have accepted that, thus far, the texture of a vegan cake rolled and compressed will always be a bit off. So this might be the last year I present this classic holiday dessert to loved ones–unless there is a new recipe I stumble upon that yields a better result.

I want to share how deliciously wonderful this recipe for Brown Sugar Ermine frosting is despite the main recipe (a pumpkin roll which I attempted twice) failing. Ermine frosting is an old fashioned recipe that results in airy, cream-like frosting with a nuanced sweetness. And it requires no powdered sugar! You start with boiling a milk and flour slurry with brown sugar first. You cool the result, a thick and fragrant caramelly glop of heaven, then whip it with butter and vanilla.

It has a beautiful texture and is far better than a typical buttercream. I look forward to another reason to make a batch of this!

So here is the cake that would be rolled into the log. I used this recipe again, like I had for a couple of years. It is not very rich and indeed results in a thin moist cake you’d imagine would be good for rolling. But it doesn’t have much chocolatey flavor. Using a cake as a means to achieving a successful roll, instead of taste, wasn’t sitting right with me, but still I roll…

The end result is a kind of light brown Yodel cake–both with consistency and taste.

Flipped out of the pan

Covered in powdered sugar. Some recipes call for covering in cocoa powder, but I think that’s too bitter.

It rolled easily in the tea towel, tightly and firm.

Because it is such a thin cake, I made another to roll lengthwise.

Here they sit. The worst part would be unrolling them to add that delicious frosting. Note: I stupidly put the frosting in the fridge as it’d have to stay out longer than I was comfortable with while cakes cooled. But it went rock solid in the fridge then broke when I re-whipped despite the recipe noting that it would be fine. Kind of a bummer.

Rolled up with that broken frosting. Waaah

Moving onward to garnish. I was happy to mold these adorable marzipan magic mushrooms for my forest scene. My guy helped make the spots.

I needed some green moss for my log. Here is the green moss coming together. I really like the look the green gave to the end product, but next time a more Earthy hued green would be better.

Ready for their log!

I made a ganache frosting to coat the log–to impart some real chocolate flavor but also to help hold up the mushrooms. This chocolate spackle did its job well and we drove 5 and a half hours to Long Island and nothing on the cake budged!