Kids, don't try this at home........

Yes, well the Christmas thing is over, we made it through Boxing Day, I have quite a few Brit friends who take it seriously! I gained a half kilo, but that's normal winter weight, nothing to get alarmed about....yet!
It's not for lack of trying, when ever I go anywhere, there are cookies, cakes, mulled wine...uhhh...chocolate. We are just as bad here. My wife bakes the cookies she has made every year since she was a little girl in Seattle. But to be in France at Christmas...to just go into the markets and see displays of everything you could ever imagine indulging yourself and lots of it,the over powering odor of truffles in a green grocer, the displays of foie gras and incredible carnivorous artistry in a charcuterie... then there is patisserie. In another life, I could have been either a charcutier or a patissier. I love to make complicated desserts. It's like a science project mixed with art. The classic dessert for a Christmas Feast here is a Buche de Noel...a Yule Log. It comes from the tradition of burning a huge log in the fireplace At Christmas through New Years to bring good luck, health and harvest.
The log now is a cake. It's traditionally a genoise which is rolled like a jelly roll and filled with a variety of fillings and decorated. Last year I did a jelly roll that was covered with swiss merinque and baked. It was decorated with marzipan leaves and mushrooms. This year I made a Mocha Mousse Buche. It is decorated with chocolate holly leaves which I made by covering real holly leaves with dark chocolate and putting them into the freezer until I was ready to peel the chocolate off and apply them to the cake.
Here's the procedure:

The cake: In a bowl, cream together 4 egg yolks and 1/3 cup sugar. Beat it for at least 4 or 5 minutes at medium speed. Then stir in 1/2 cup flour by hand. In another bowl, beat 3 egg whites until they are stiff, half way through the beating, add a tablespoon of sugar.
Melt 25 grams of butter and pour over the egg yolks and flour, then carefully fold in the beaten egg whites.
Have a baking sheet covered with a buttered sheet of parchment, at least 10"by12". Spread the batter evenly on the sheet no thicker than 1/2 inch. Then pop it into a hot oven (425 degrees) for about 15 minutes, keeping an eye on it so it doesn't color too much.
When it is done, flip the cake out with the paper on a flat surface, brush the back of the paper with a damp brush and wait 2 minutes. The paper will peel off perfectly.
Now, when it is cool, it is ready to fill.

The Mocha Mousse: Take 500 grams of butter (2 cups) out of the fridge and let it get soft for at least an hour. Put it into a mixing bowl and whip it at low speed for a few minutes to get it airy and soft and light.
Make an uncooked batch of French meringue: whip 3 egg whites stiff, halfway through the whipping add a tablespoon of sugar.
When the whites are stiff, fold in by hand 1/3 cup of granulated sugar and 1/2 cup of powdered sugar.
Too the whipped butter add a few teaspoons of coffee extract. I made my own coffee extract by taking a little of my morning coffee and and adding a lot of decaf instant to it. It should be thick! Whip it into the butter.
Then fold the meringue into the butter by hand carefully. The butter has to be really soft for this to work. After a few minutes of gently mixing, voila, the mousse is finished.



Assemble the cake:
You need some coffee syrup. This is simple, make a little simple sugar syrup by boiling say, 1/3 cup water and 1/3 cup sugar. When it cools, add more of your homebrewed coffee extract!
Brush the surface of the cake with the coffee syrup. Then spread 3/4 of the mousse over the surface. Roll the cake and refrigerate for a half hour.
Cut the ends off of the cake to make them nice and even. You can use these ends as branches on the log. Spread the remainder of the mousse over the outside of the cake.
You could use a pastry bag with a star shaped nozzle, I used a spatula then textured it with a fork to simulate bark.
Then it's time for magic. If you are crafty, you could make swiss meringue mushrooms or little decorations of marzipan. This year, I opted for simplicity, I made the dark chocolate holly leaves and put a little plastic traditional elf with an axe on top, then dusted it with powdered sugar.
Refrigerate, it's best if refrigerated overnight.
I know some of you are getting congestive heart failure just reading this recipe, but this is something you do once a year. Eat a slice, then go out and chop wood for a few hours...it works for me.