Yule Log Challenge

Happy Holidays, all... Joey here, announcing our membership in the Daring Bakers group!!! We received our logo yesterday (as you can see on the left) and are very excited about our Yule log, which is our first challenge as members of the group... Steven began yesterday by making mushrooms from meringue... See?









Don't they look real?

This morning I made the genoise...









the sugar and eggs










heating the sugar and eggs










whisking the heated sugar and eggs to triple the volume and cool them, too










I missed the opportunity to photograph the batter going in to the pan, but this is the result when it comes out of the oven about 10 minutes later... There was a bit of a bubble, but that's okay










spreading the orange-flavored buttercream, and then (drum roll)...










the big roll and chill!!!!


And now that the roll is chilled, and the buttercream is finished, we start building our log...









So, the texturing begins, too...





Steven adds snow...






...and the meringue mushrooms...










And it's finished!!! Complete with little forest resident!!!











This was really fun!!!! This ended up being the plain genoise, with a buttercream filling flavored with Grand Marnier, and bittersweet chocolate buttercream for the bark... We will be tasting this Monday night in South Orange, NJ for Christmas Eve... more photos when we return to the big city!