Wednesday, December 16, 2015

I Wanna Be Holiday Edition: Yule Logs and Meringues

My mom and I decided to try and make Yule Log roll cakes. The first attempt is in the picture above. It is the only pic I took because it was the practice one. It looks like a real Yule Log. We we so happy. The only problem came with the roll cake recipe which was just too eggy
So we found another recipe for the next try. The one that would go to my mom's office party. The new roll cake recipe worked perfectly. And it used less eggs and more flour than the first one.
Look at that lovely Cake Burrito

I even made mushroom meringue cookies to decorate the Yule log. Side note. I wish I had taken pictures of the assembly process for these meringues. If I make them again I will remember to take pictures because they came out great and taste delicious. 
Maybe I will use them in a Alice in Wonderland themed project.
Now here is where things go wrong!
With the first Yule Log cake we used a semi-sweet ganache. Semi-sweet chocolate chips, heavy whipping cream and a splash of vanilla. It worked perfectly. It covered the cake with an almost fudgey consistency after cooling that could be made to look like the texture of a log. 
With the second cake mom wanted Milk Chocolate ganache
Milk Chocolate ganache does really work for this. As you can see it the pictures above and below.
It went everywhere and was too thin.
Oh the chocolate Humanity!
In order to try and hide the massive chocolate spill we put on a lot of mushroom meringues.
Unlike the semi-sweet ganache, the milk chocolate version tried to melt the meringues.
I mean, the mushrooms are held together by the semi-sweet ganache so how could this happen?
Basically don't use milk chocolate as a ganache unless you are making petite fours. 

Christmas Tree Meringues with half a Fail
Since everyone that had the Mushroom Meringues loved them, I wanted to try something more festive. Christmas Tree Meringue cookies sounded ideal.
I made half just plain with only some vanilla extract and the other half flavored with peppermint.
The ones on the right are the plain ones and they are the ones that actually piped up into tree like cookies.
The mint ones had too much liquid and flattened like my hopes and dreams. 
But SPRINKLES!
I think they plain ones look great. Don't they look like little Christmas trees with the little ornaments.
BTW the mint ones look sad but taste amazing.
Maybe not my worst baking fail.
The Yule log take two wins that dubious honor.






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