Merry Christmas! ¡Feliz Navidad! Joyeux Noël!
‘Tis the season to indulge in all things seasonal, including the festive chocolately delight that is the bûche de Noël.
While researching French recipes I came to an interesting discovery. Most of the images of French bûches de Noël appeared to show a plain sponge wrapped around a chocolate filling. This stood in contrast to the English recipes I perused, which showing a chocolate sponge with a cream filling. I had always assumed that all yule logs were created equal, but upon comparing, I definitely noticed a different pattern.
Furthermore, the French version uses a joconde sponge. This variety contains ground nuts (usually almonds) and no chemical leavening. The egg whites are whisked to stiff peaks to give the sponge its rise. Incidentally, La Joconde is the French name for Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, the Mona Lisa. Joconde derives from the Italian name for it (La Gioconda), which was a play on the subject’s married name, Lisa del Giocondo. It means ‘the jocund one’ or ‘the happy one’. This type of sponge is often used for swiss rolls, layer cakes (such as an opera cake) and as a base for entremets.
Baking
The first step is to make the ganache. It takes a fair amount of time to cool and thicken, so it makes sense to prepare this before the sponge.
The joconde is made by whisking together the egg yolks and sugar, adding whisked egg whites, and then folding in the ground almonds and flour. The mixture is then spread over a baking tray the appropriate dimensions for a yule log, and baked for approximately 10 minutes.
The recipe I used had a great hack for preventing the sponge from cracking when rolled: when you remove from the oven, flip onto a damp tea towel, roll up and leave to cool for 10 minutes. The damp tea towel prevents the cake from drying out, allowing greater flexibility. The sponge is then unrolled, filled and rolled up again before being smothered with the remaining ganache. It needed to chill for at least an hour, but I left mine overnight as it was scheduled for Christmas Day dessert.
Translation
The recipe instructs you to start by making the ganache as it needs time to ‘refroidir et de durcir’, i.e. cool and harden. Since the ganache would be unusable if it hardened, I decided that the more accurate meaning here was ‘thicken’. After all, it needs to have ‘la consistance d’une pâte à tartiner’, the consistency of a spread, i.e. to be a spreadable consistency.
‘Biscuit roulé’, swiss roll sponge, is used to refer to the cake, but I felt the specifics were not required here as there is only one sponge being made, so I simply chose ‘sponge’.
The baker is told ‘Ajoutez ensuite la farine et la poudre d’amande tamisées (c’est important)’, literally ‘add the four and sieved ground almonds (this is important)’. The sentence structure here is awkward and my suggestion is to turn it around so that it is obvious that what is important is that the ground almonds are sieved, rather than that the flour and almonds are added: ‘Sieve the ground almonds (do not skip this step). Add to the mixture along with the flour.’ I used ‘Do not skip this step’ instead of ‘this is important’ as it is commonly seen in recipes and more direct.
As with previous recipes, this one uses a ‘spatule’ to spread the cake mixture on the tray. As verified by the video, this is definitely referring to a palette knife, rather than a spatula.
Overall
A bûche de Noël is actually straightforward to make. It helps if your baking tray is the correct dimensions. Mine was a little smaller, resulting in a thicker sponge, making it awkward to roll up. I opted for milk chocolate instead of dark chocolate, so I required a higher chocolate to cream ratio for the ganache. Bear this in mind if dabbling with the recipe, as the ganache needs to thicken in order to cover the cake.
It was pleasant to something festive and French. It’s a great make-ahead bake as you can prepare the night before and leave it to set in the fridge. I was keen to jazz up the plain sponge and chocolate ganache, so I included some ground cardamom in the joconde and added orange blossom in the ganache to complement the chocolate. I topped with candied orange peel, gold stars, icing sugar and gold dust.
Voilà!
