Our Buche de Noel!

 I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but Bookworm is taking a weekly French class this year. It's a small class of boys and girls, starting out in their first year of French together; it's held at another homeschooling family's home. (Quite conveniently for us they live but a stone's throw away ~ and even more conveniently, my mum drives BW to and from class for me ~ this way Earlybird's morning doesn't get rattled.) Bookworm's teacher is absolutely wonderful and makes the class informative and fun - and in the case of this week's meeting, festive too! For their last class before a brief Christmas break, Madame organized a lovely holiday fete. Each family prepared a signature French dish, and Bookworm chose to bring the traditional Buche de Noel. I'd like to share the recipe and some pictures with you below - it was really much easier to make than I thought it would be!

First of all I should mention that my first intention was to make this gorgeous (but much more complex) cake found at (where else?) Martha Stewart's site. The steps and ingredients were many, but both Bookworm and I just loved the woodland appearance of this particular cake. As the party day got closer however, I panicked I did a little googling and found a simpler recipe at Cooks.com. 

So I started with a simple spongey chocolate cake, baked in a jelly roll pan. It got turned out onto a dishcloth dusted with powdered sugar ..

  

... and then rolled into said dishcloth - carefully. *Note, this part was not as hard as I feared - the cake was very flexible and held its shape well.

 

Once the cake cooled, it was spread with a bit of mocha buttercream frosting, and a generous amount of sweetened whipped cream.

 

 It was next rolled up again (sans towel) and then frosted with the remaining buttercream.

  

I used the tines of a fork to give a bark-like appearance to the frosting.

 

And just before Bookworm took it to class, we sprinkled it with powdered sugar ...

... a light dusting of snow on the log!

 This was so fun to make, I think I'll make it again for Christmas eve. :)

 Have a great night everyone ~ I'll be back again soon!