Cake #1: Buche de Noel (Yule Log Cake)
I was quite pleased with how this turned out. I didn't have time to make the meringue mushrooms but all was well anyways. I used a Cook's Illustrated recipe that included a rich, dark chocolate sponge cake with an espresso mascarpone filling. The filling was most especially delicious and although I had thought about substituting the mascarpone with cream cheese I am glad I hadn't. The mascarpone lended a creamy velvety texture to the filling without the tangy 'cheesy' taste. I did have a bit of a problem rolling the cake as it immediately started cracking but that was fixed with extra ganache. I think I may have overbeaten the egg whites again (those darn egg whites!)
Cake #2: Creme Brulee (actually not a cake)
I decided to accompany this creme brulee with the chocolate cloud cake (see below) for the Christmas Eve party at my dad's house. One of his good friends is celiac (meaning he can't have any wheat) so I always find it a fun challenge to bring unique non-flour desserts when he is there. For this creme brulee, I used Nigella's recipe from Nigella Bites. I was originally going to use Cooks Illustrated but it was way too much for only 5 people so I paired down with Nigella's recipe. Plus, Nigella's is cooked on the stovetop which I thought would be much better than setting up the water bath for an creme brulee oven bake. However, the first time I started making this my custard split and I did see it coming but did not (although highly recommended by both recipes) keep cold water nearby to stop the cooking. So I had to make it a second time (and kept a roasting pan full of ice and cold water) and cooked it over low heat making it nearly 15 minutes before it had thickened enough to my liking. And it did set nicely after it had chilled with a very smooth vanilla taste. It was a lot of fun torching the sugar on top but it did take some practice. In fact, mine ended up being the only one that was torched properly. Oh well, everyone still thought it to be quite good.
Cake #3: Chocolate Cloud Cake ** no picture unfortunately :( **
This was the accompanying flourless chocolate cake that I made for Christmas Eve and boy am I glad that I used the best chocolate I had (Green & Blacks) because that's all you could taste with this cake: a rich, truffle-like with a lightly sweetened cloud of whip cream to just mildly counter the chocolate rush that hits your mouth when you take a bite. Of course, this was out of Nigella Bites (although this particular one is not her's) and because of that turned out to be absolutely delicious. :)
Cake #4: Snowman Cake
Sorry for the lack of better quality pictures (these were taken with my boyfriend's cell phone camera). This is my fourth year in keeping up with the snowman cake tradition so this year I decided upon buying the 3-d snowman mold from Williams & Sonoma. Well, I'm not sure I would do it again because the cake was a little hard to bake in the mold. Because the mold has various depths and widths to accommodate the shape and outline of the snowman, the cake was overcooked in the shallow ends and a bit underbaked in the more deeper ends. Then when I tried to frost it the two parts of him kept coming apart but I might have remedied that by letting it set for a bit before standing him up. Anyways, here is a picture of last years snowman and this years snowman.
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