A Buche Of Dreams

White Chocolate Hazelnut and Brown Butter Milk Chocolate

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Before we get to this weeks post I have a couple bits of fun news for you in the run up to Christmas.

Events

This coming week I have my final two book tour events of the year. On Friday 13th I will be in conversation with Ben Mims where we will be chatting about our respective cookie books and all things cookies. This event is at Fortnum and Mason in London 3pm-4.30pm on the third floor book shop. Tickets for this event can be found below. Note: this is primarily an event in support of Ben’s brilliant book Crumbs but they’ll have copies of my book ‘Small Batch Cookies’ available in storee and it will be a a really fun cookie based event.

And then on Sunday the 15th I’ll be baking cookies and signing books from 12-3pm at Harrods in London. This is a drop in event and no tickets are needed, just pop along for a cookie and copy of ‘Small Batch Cookies’. This event is in collaboration with Nordicware.

Brownies

Some of you might remember that I have previously worked with the folk at Dishpatch on some seasonal brownies and we’ve brought them back exclusively for Christmas. Available just in the month of December, I worked with the team to develop a DELICIOUS mince pie brownie that would be perfect as a treat for yourself or sent as a gift. They use my fudgy brownie recipe and add a little mincemeat and then top the brownies with a brown butter streusel. They’re dense and rich with warm spicing from the mincemeat and have great flavour and texture from the streusel. The brilliant thing about thesee brownies, other than the fact they’re absolutely delicious, is that the packaging is deisgned to fit through a standard letterbox so they make great gifts to send this Christmas season.

It is finally officially Christmas baking season. I know I’ve already been in that mode for the last couple of weeks, but now it’s socially acceptable; there’ll be no weird looks for baking whilst I’m dancing around the kitchen listening to Mariah Carey. Okay, some weird looks, but that's just because my dancing is terrible. Whilst I am showing my holiday spirit through my baking, you probably wouldn’t know we are deep in the festive season if you looked at my house. No tree. No decorations. Nothing. I’m not saying they won't happen at some point, but after being in our house for almost a year, I am still not sure which still-packed moving box they’re in. And, because we have to pack up the house for the renovations early next month, I’m not sure it's worth the effort to dig them out. Cut to me this weekend changing my mind and decorating the whole house!

As you might have noticed from the title of today's newsletter, we are taking a break from the Christmas cookie series. But, fear not, we’ll be back on the cookie train next week. This week I wanted to give you an idea for a fabulous Christmas cake, something you might want to serve on the big day or possibly for any dinner parties you might be hosting in the coming weeks. The cake isn’t overly decorated or fussy, yet it is still incredibly elegant and full of festive flavour. The cake is a simple chiffon roll cake, filled with the most incredibly flavoured white chocolate and hazelnut whipped ganache and rolled up and decorated with a show-stopping brown butter milk chocolate ganache. If that isn’t enough to have you rushing to your kitchen, I might be in the wrong business.

The cake itself is a whisked sponge, and it's my favourite style when you need a thin, flexible cake that won't crack when rolled up. If you are making a classic Swiss Roll, the sponge might be made without any added fat, and this can result in a dry sponge that can be prone to cracking, although delicious when made well. Instead I used a chiffon cake. Chiffon is a style of whisked sponge cake that has a little oil added for texture. The oil keeps the cake moist, but it is also key to a flexible sponge that is less prone to cracking. Because butter is solid at room temperature, cakes made with butter might be flexible whilst fresh from the oven; once they cool, the cakes are firmer, and they tend to crack more frequently. This is the reason many Swiss roll recipes have you roll up the cake very soon after it comes out of the oven. Because oil is liquid at room temperature, this issue isn’t a problem in this recipe; the cake stays moist and flexible even after it has cooled. While in this recipe I do suggest rolling up the cake fresh from the oven, this is more of a failsafe situation; I have actually left this cake for hours at room temperature and still been able to roll it up without issue.

When making a chiffon cake, the base of the baking tray is lined with paper, but the sides of the tray need to remain dry and free of any fat. Chiffon cakes typically rely on the eggs and the air whipped into them for their leavening (mine includes a little baking powder as added insurance). The cake is also made with very little flour, which means the sponge is light and delicate, and it needs to be able to cling to the sides of the tray in order to rise properly.

For the additional elements, we are relying on a couple of different styles of ganache. The filling is a white chocolate whipped ganache made with the addition of a little hazelnut paste. If you’re a fan of any of the Kinder Bueno line of chocolate bars, you’ll know the allure of this flavour combo. The cake is then coated in a milk chocolate ganache that is made with the addition of a little brown butter, which makes the ganache taste incredibly toasty. You might imagine that the flavour of the brown butter would be overwhelmed by the milk chocolate, but it works like magic; this is an incredible ganache.

For decoration I have kept things very simple, with no other elements needed, at least as far as I was concerned. If you want, you can fashion this as a classic buche de noel with a branch extending off from the main log, or you could coat the cake in shards of tempered chocolate, or maybe coat it in a blanket of chopped hazelnuts. But, for me, simple was what I wanted. If you pushed me into adding one extra element to make the whole thing a little extra special, I’d probably dot the outside of the cake with some caramelised hazelnut pieces.