Love for a Child

Yeah, like the Jason Mraz song...but this is the real deal! Son #1 comes home complaining about his dizzy French teacher who parlayed "I'll ask my Mom if we can bake for French Club" into a definite commitment to make a buche de noel for the club meeting this afternoon. Mind you, the teacher isn't the only airhead here; my son knew about this over the weekend but didn't mention it until last night when I walked in from work at almost 6PM. "Well, I mentioned it to Dad on Friday..." Hubby is a great cook but I don't think he's ever tried to bake anything in his life, heh heh, and he certainly wouldn't take the initiative of mentioning it to me. Sigh, here we go again, the last minute desperation cha cha.

So we start googling to find easy buche de noel recipes. (For those who don't know, it's the French version of a yule log...jelly roll cake with whipped cream and chocolate...nicely decorated.) So we settled on one, and all I needed was a tub of whipped chocolate frosting and some red and green sprinkles. The class would definitely be aware that we don't own a patisserie, so why aim for bake shop perfection?

Separate five eggs. I find this to be a bit of a pain in the derriere, so don't normally gravitate towards recipes that call for it, BUT we're talking about something for one of the kids for school. So I did it. Whew, the whites didn't get any yolks in them. The yolks still had a bit of white attached, but that's okay.

Beat yolks until thickened, about five minutes. The kid took care of this while Mom measured out the 2/3 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons flour, and 3 tablespoons cocoa powder. Next was the easy part; beat in sugar first, then the flour and cocoa...although I had to show him how to stir the cocoa by hand first until it all gets moist so you avoid the fragile cocoa dust coating everything in the kitchen. Beat whites until stiff peaks form. I took care of that little chore. Fold in whites until smooth. Pour into prepared jelly roll pan. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes, or until top springs back lightly when touched.

After 15 minutes we take the pan out of the oven. After reading directions and the doneness test OUT LOUD, son sticks one of his fingers clear through the cake. Zut alors! Anyway, we turned out the cake onto a dish towel that had been sprinkled with confectionary sugar and gently rolled it up, putting it aside for half an hour to cool. Son thought it was awesome that the cake didn't break when unrolled...that's what stiff peaked egg whites will do for ya.

After spreading about 1/3 of the frosting on the cake, leaving about an inch of space on each side, we rolled it up again and used the rest of the frosting on the outside. Making lines down the log to simulate the "bark effect" we then decorated with red and green. Cake taker was stored in the basement overnight to chill. Hope it made the trip to school in one piece this morning; it was an icy snowy day.

What did I really feel like doing after dinner last night? Watching an old VHS tape of Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. Oh well, maybe tonight!