TWD: Baking Chez Moi - Gingerbread Buche de Noel

Our last Baking Chez Moi recipe for December is Gingerbread Buche de Noel!  It was actually scheduled for before Christmas, but I made it for Christmas and figured I would post it later.  Later ended up being today!  

The huge ginormous benefit to baking and posting after the post-date is you can see what other bakers thought of the recipe and what advice they might have!  Yeah!  So, thanks to that information, I made a few pieces of this recipe in advance, and halved the frosting amount.  Thanks, everyone!

There are four components to this cake:  The cake itself, which is a chiffon-style very thin cake that is rolled up' the filling, the frosting, and some pecan praline.  I  made the praline and the filling in advance!  This was fantastic since I made the somewhat crazy decision to serve this on Christmas.  The thing is, this is theoretically a perfect cake for Christmas, BUT there are lots of components so if you are making a big Christmas dinner (which we did) it makes getting the cake done a bit of a squeeze.  I got it done, but boy was I ready to be OUT of the kitchen that night! 

To further explain the cake, the actual cake part is a gingerbread flavor.  It is a very thin cake that is baked in a half-sheet pan and then rolled up.  In fact, it is rolled in a powdered sugar coated tea towel  as it cools so that it cools with the ability to roll up when the time comes.  Smart.  Before it is rolled for good (as in after it is cool and you are ready to actually put this cake together) you spread a filling of butter, cream cheese, cinnamon, vanilla, and a little of the pecan praline over the cake.  Then roll it up tightly, using a piece of parchment and a ruler and this fun pull-tug technique to make the cake roll nice and tight.  Again, smart.  That sits in the refrigerator a bit while you make a marshmallow frosting that is puffy and lovely.  Put a thick layer of the marshmallow frosting around the top and sides of the cake and then sprinkle on the praline pecans and you are ready!  

The magic occurs when you slice it.  Before hand, it just looks like this:

This is nice and everything, but once you slice it and you see all the rings, SUCCESS!!

This was really quite tasty.  I liked that the filling did not actually contain any sugar, as the cake, frosting and praline evened everything out.  And, (this is weird for a cake) but when i had another piece a day later, I thought that the flavors were actually more pronounced!  

So, overall a success!  I am not sure whether I would make this again, as there are lots of great desserts for Christmas-time.  But this was very tasty!  Dorie is right... This would be good if you just made it on some random day and then invited people over for cake and champagne. 

Oh, and there was an article in the Food section of the NY Times before Christmas that mentioned that this is the most complicated recipe in the book.  I did it!  Surely I will have continued success!!

Happy holidays, everyone!  I look forward to baking and crafting with you in the new year!