Hey Nathalie here. Today i’m going to show
you how to put together a Buche de Noel that will not only achieve its glutenous cousin,
but will make everybody think it’s the real deal. Last week I was peeking at all the different
bakeries and looked at those delicious desserts and then a swiss roll caught my attention. Looks fabulous, doesn’t it! It also made me think
of what I want to make for christmas which is a Buche de Noel which is a swiss roll. It’s just called a bit fancier. I mean it’s french, it will be fancier. It’s called Buche de Noel. I want to look at it though more in detail.
So understand what I’m up to if I want to make this gluten-free. A swiss
roll is really just a rolled-up cake and and out of some weird reasons we really like to roll up our food. So then is really just a big roll of chocolate filled with whipped cream. To
make a Buche de Noel, you start with the sponge cake which is a very fluffy, delicate cake. You can
normally get that with all the fancy cream cakes. You see in those fancy stores.
And it’s a little
bit of a tricky cake so I’m going to make a video just showing you how to make a sponge cake. So for
purpose of this video we’re going to skip ahead. You’re going to think you mix up all your batter
and here we go. So your batter is already mixed and instead of pouring it into a cake form you’re
going to pour it into a baking tray since we’re rolling this up. We’re going to bake the cake for
20 minutes and take it out where the cake is done. Here’s where the tricky part starts.
You want to
let the cake cool down till about body temperature then you place a kitchen towel on the top of the
dough and start rolling it just like a burrito. And then it needs its beauty rest. So you put
it to the side and let it completely cool down. In the meantime, we’re gonna work on the decoration for the Buche Noel. And well and one of the signature items are mushrooms.
Certainly not
real mushrooms and you may not want to pick them. For health and for taste concerns we’re
going to make our mushrooms out of marzipan. Working with marzipan can make very sticky fingers.
So to prevent that, you normally use powdered sugar. I’m gonna roll out some marzipan and use it
as the stem of my mushroom. I’m gonna use a toothpick and put it through the stem, so I can
later easily mount it on the top of the cake. When I have something which looks close
enough to a mushroom stem, I’m gonna work on the mushroom caps.
And they are small little
ovals, probably like half a centimeter thick. I attached the marzipan stem and mushroom cap
with a sharp knife. And mash both the stem and the cap together to stick together. I give the
marzipan one more once over just to make sure that it looks like a mushroom. I’m gonna put
my finished mushroom aside for later now. I’m going to model the bark of the wood log. After some
inspiration how the wood log would look like, I’m going to start melting some chocolate. One of the
ways to melt chocolate is over a hot water bath. You want to break down the
chocolate into small pieces. You’re going to pour about 3 centimeters
or an inch of water into the pot, and get it to a boiling point. Now
the water releases a lot of steam. And that is when you put the bowl with the
chocolate on the top of it the steam will be melting the chocolate.
You want to continuously
steer the chocolate to make sure it melts evenly. When the chocolate is all melted you want to lift
the melted chocolate out of the hot water bath. And try not to burn yourself! With different size
spatulas or a spoon spread the chocolate over the prepared baking paper. Depending on the temperature
of your workspace, the chocolate will solidify within a few minutes. Now if you’re in Florida or
a warmer state it may take a little bit longer. So you want to pop it into the freezer for a
few minutes or the fridge. When the chocolate is solidified, you want to take a cake spatula and
carefully lift the chocolate bark from the baking sheet and put it aside for later. Since I’m now
finished with the decoration, I’m going to start working on the filling. I’m going to measure
50 gram or a quarter cup of powdered sugar, 25 grams or a quarter cup of cocoa powder and
I pour 400 milliliters about one and a half cup of heavy cream into a mixing bowl.
I’m going to
whip the heavy cream until it reached a soft peak. I’m going to add powdered sugar via a fine
mesh to make sure it doesn’t form too many clumps and then add the chocolate powder the same way. I’m
gonna continue whipping the whipped cream until it comes to a nice stiff peak. But I use the whisk
attachment and apparently my machine is too crappy. And it got stuck in the whipped cream. so I’m gonna
quick clean the whip as with whisk attachment. I’m gonna change it to the regular beaters and
hopefully, I can finish up mixing the whipped cream with the regular beater attachment. I was able to
finish the whipped cream filling and I’m gonna add now one teaspoon of vanilla extract and for a
a little bit of added kick I’m gonna add one to two teaspoons of dark rum, but that’s really more optional. I’m gonna start assembling my cake now and gonna carefully unroll my sponge cake and hope it doesn’t break.
Unfortunately the the cake did break and it’s not really surprising because it’s a gluten-free cake. And it loses a lot of elasticity because of the lack of
the gluten which makes everything so elastic. And I’m not gonna feel too bad about it
because professional cake is also broken. I’m gonna add now the whipped cream filling
into the swiss roll which works also as a really good glue.
I’m going to spread the
whipped cream filling as evenly as possible into the swiss roll. The cream should be about
half a centimeter or a quarter-inch thick and then when it’s evenly spread I’m gonna roll the swiss roll back up. I was just mildly annoyed that my swiss roll broke. So I had to
explore another way to roll my swiss roll hoping it will not break. And I did find another method. And what I found was I’m gonna do the same process. Gonna bake my dough. Let it cool down.
But I’m gonna let it cool down a little bit more. So it’s about 15 degrees celsius which should be
like 45 degree fahrenheit, something that bulk park. And then i’m gonna spread already the whipped
cream filling onto the cake. What is important though is to make sure the cake is cold enough,
because otherwise, the whipped cream will be melting on the top of your cake. So getting the
the temperature right is really important here. I’m going to spread the delicious chocolate
cream filling on the top of the cake making sure it’s all evenly covered with
about half a centimeters or a quarter an inch of cream and then I’m gonna roll up the swiss
roll with the baking paper.
So this is the roll where I first rolled the cake and then put the
filling in and you can see how it broke over here and over here. Now since it’s covered with the
whipped cream. It doesn’t really matter as much. However if it would be like a naked roll where
there is no cream. You would see the break and it would be really annoying. This is the
roll where I put the whipped cream filling in and then rolled it. And you still
see how the cake broke right here. However the outside didn’t break at all which is nice. So my preference is this rolling method. Let’s get back to finishing the cake though. I’m
gonna cover the swiss roll with the remaining whipped cream filling. You should have about a
third or a quarter left. I’m gonna use a cake spatula to evenly cover all the surroundings
of the log and you know if you have any cracks now you can just put some whipped cream filling
in and nobody even will know there was one before. The cake is now nicely covered with the
whipped cream and i’m gonna add now my chocolate wood bark to the outside of the log
and making it all look really nice and pretty. I’m gonna lay them like shingles till the entire
log is covered.
And for the ground finale we’re gonna add our mushrooms and dust our Buche Noel well with some powdered sugar. And here’s your Buche Noel. We are ready for Christmas. Below in the video
description, I have all the ingredients, the amounts I’m using, and local places where you can buy them. And if you enjoyed watching it, please, make sure to subscribe to my channel and check the bell
to get notifications about any upcoming videos.
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