New project for Christmas Eve Feast - pt 5

Well I'm glad THAT'S as done as it can get before we leave tomorrow... Things were going real good up until the point of "frosting" the Yule Log and putting on the chocolate, and then it got a bit frustrating. Here's the log with both ends cut off at an angle (they get stuck on to look like chopped branches later). Sure there's exposed mousse, but that's to be covered with frosting/ganache.


The ganache took FOREVER to start firming up. You were supposed to melt the chocolate in the heated cream, chill it a short bit, and it would firm up. Only it took well over an hour. Then the instructions said to mix it until it became the texture of soft butter. Um. Ok. But won't that make it hard to frost a fragile cake?

MOST of the ganache went on ok, but then it started to thicken quite a bit, and was pulling at the cake. Didn't look awful, but it did turn really pale during the mixing stage. I drug fork tines through it to look like wood grain, as you often see done to Yule Logs, but because it was setting so much, that just tore up the frosting. Hm. Ok, well, it could be an undercoat texture because you were ALSO supposed to put on chocolate "bark" - melted chocolate that had been spread out thin to chill/harden, and then "rolled back and forth" in it's parchment paper to break it into long shards.

Mine didn't do that. I got lots of small shards - very few were long (and I only rolled my parchment paper in one direction, back and forth - not like I crumpled it). Hm. Alright, well, some trees have smaller pieces of bark...so I stuck 'em in all over, making sure to overlap - sort of like fish scales?

Brett said it sort of looks like an alien tree...


Yeah, I guess I can see that. Not much I can do for it now. I dusted it with a little powdered sugar after taking these pictures (not sure that helped matters), and will tuck some of the mushrooms in here and there once we're at Andy & Kelli's...


And I bet you love my classy foil-wrapped piece of cardboard. I had to cut something to size to fit in a long cake/cupcake carrier in the hopes it'll secure the log. Then I'll put that carrier down inside a tub with a lid, and will put bags of ice to either side of the cupcake carrier in the tub - to both anchor and chill it for the ride.

This should be fun.

Let's just hope it TASTES good! ;-)