Yule Log

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux.
They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand

I make Julia Child's traditional Bûche de Noël for Christmas every year, but this year I took a break to make this alternative "cream dessert" yule log. It's a terrifying assembly of six parts: dacquoise, ganache, praline, mousse, creme brulee, and icing. The individual parts weren't all that difficult to make, but I learned several important things:

1. parchment paper is not overrated
2. let things cool before you take them out of the pan
3. make sure you have milk before you start cooking

Despite these little mishaps, the end result was delicious and artfully strata-like (pardon the slightly fuzzy photo):


And since no yule log for me is complete without meringue mushrooms, I took the leftover egg whites and whipped up a batch of simple meringues--1 cup sugar to 4 egg whites. You just pipe mounds for the caps and rods for the stems, hollow out the tops a little and use some extra chocolate icing to stick them together. Perfect!


I made only one little modification to the recipe: hazelnut instead of almond dacquoise. You can find the recipe along with many variations here.