Gingerbread Buche De Noel

This Gingerbread Buche De Noel is an adaptation from the more commonly known Christmas Yule Log. I, however, prefer to call this new adaptation 'a posh swiss roll'. This posh swiss roll is for every sweet toothed ginger and black treacle lover out there!

 I came about making this due to work having another charity bake off and I immediately decided on two things 1) It had to be a different kind of Christmas bake i.e NOT mince pies or stollen - but something different and 2) NOT chocolate! Everybody is sick of chocolate by the time New Years Eve rolls round, well I certainly most am! So I rummaged through all my mums Good Food magazines and voila! The Gingerbread Buche De Noel!

I have never been a delicate, decorative or creative person and I cant pipe to save my life but I thought I would give it ago! My mum ate the off-cuts and loved it and it was totally demolished by my colleagues at work so it must be good!! I ended up making this really late at night and didn't have much patience for being decorative however I think it turned out all right - that is until someone at work accidentally turned it upside down at work....

Happy Baking!

Prep: 35 mins
Cook: 12 mins
Feeds: 10-12 slices

Ingredients

50g Butter
50g Treacle
50G Golden Syrup
2 Balls Stem Ginger
4 Large Eggs
100g Dark Muscovado Sugar
100g Plain Flour
1/4 Tsp Baking Powder
2 Tsp Ground Ginger
1/2 Tsp Ground Cinnamon

For The Icing

200g Butter
300g Icing Sugar
2 Tsp Vanilla Extract
3 Tbsp Ginger Syrup
Whie Pearl Sprinkles to decorate

1. Heat oven to 190C/170C fan/gas 5. Grease and line a 20 x 30cm Swiss roll tin with baking parchment, then grease the parchment a little too. Put the treacle, syrup, butter and stem ginger in a pan, heat until melted and stir to combine, then set aside to cool a little.                                 
2. Put the eggs and sugar in a bowl and whisk using an electric hand whisk until light, mousse-like and doubled in size – this will take about 10 mins. The mixture is ready when it holds a ribbon trail from the beaters for 3 secs. Sift over the flour, baking powder and spices, then pour the melted butter mixture around the sides of the bowl so that it trickles down into the whisked eggs. Very gently fold everything together with a large metal spoon. When just combined, pour the mixture into the Swiss roll tin and ease it into the corners. Bake for 12 mins until just cooked.                                                                                                                                             
3. While the sponge is cooking, lay a sheet of baking parchment, big enough to fit the cake, on your work surface and dust with a little sugar. Once cooked, tip the cake directly onto the parchment. Use a small serrated knife to score a line about 2cm from one of the shorter ends, making sure you don’t cut all the way through – this will help to get a tight roll. Gently roll up from this end, rolling the parchment between the layers. Leave to cool like this on a wire rack to help set the shape.                                                                                                                        
4. To make the icing, put the ingredients in a bowl and whisk until smooth. Transfer to a piping bag fitted with a large round nozzle, or use a plastic sandwich bag and snip off one corner to make a hole about 1cm wide. Unroll the sponge and drizzle the surface with 2 tbsp ginger syrup. Pipe a layer of ginger buttercream over the inside of the roll, then use the paper underneath to help tightly re-roll into a roulade. Slice off both ends for a neat finish. The Bûche can be frozen at this point – simply re-roll in the parchment, then in foil, and freeze. Defrost at room temperature before continuing.                                                                                                                                                         
5. Place the Bûche on a serving plate or board. Use the remaining icing to pipe a thick layer over the top of the sponge, zigzagging backwards and forwards to create a tight concertina pattern. Decorate with white pearl sprinkles, if you like. The Bûche will keep in a sealed container for up to 5 days, or can be frozen for up to two months.

Chocolate Truffles

A work friend of mine has asked me to make truffles for aaaages and I went to see her the other day so it was about time! She loved them, me not so much... Im not a huge fan of dark chocolate, so next time I will use some milk chocolate - just how I made my chocolate fudge, 1/3rd milk to 2/3rds dark.
These truffles were sticky, messy and not the easiest things to make but they came out all right in the end!

The recipe came from Eric Lanlard's Chocolat and makes around 30. Keep the truffles in the fridge for up to a week.

Ingredients

250g Dark Chocolate
2 Tbsp Milk
1 Tbsp Espresso Coffee
100g Unsalted Butter
2 Egg Yolks
25g Cocoa Powder

1. Gently melt the chocolate and milk together in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water, making sure the surface of the water does not touch the bowl.                          
2. Remove from the heat and stir in the coffee, butter and egg yolks until combined. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and leave to set in the fridge for 4 hours.                                                            
3. Place the cocoa powder on a plate. Using a dessert spoon, scoop out spoonfuls of the chocolate mixture. Coast your hands in cocoa to prevent the mixture from sticking and roll the chocolate mixture between the palms of your hands to form walnut-sized balls.                                            
4. Using a fork, roll the truffles in the cocoa powder to coat.

I REALLY don't like coffee, so funnily enough, I left that ingredient out.
The stage I had issues with was rolling the chocolate mixture into balls. I found it really hard to get the right kind of temperature for the chocolate. Once the chocolate mix in the bowl was taken out the fridge, I had to let it warm up otherwise I couldn't physically scrape out chocolate with the desert spoon. However, it needed to be cold when rolling in the palms of your hands. By the end, my hands were coated in chocolate!! I can safely say, I certainly did not master the technique!

After all the fuss, it was worth it in the end as my friend enjoyed them with a nice cuppa!