This week’s second lesson was for the bûche de noël, or the christmas log.

Chef Herve is back now, so he did our demo for it on wednesday. It was a good demo, and it was fun to watch him make the cake. It’s pretty straightforward and not difficult. It’s made up of really simple components that we already know. The only part I was worried about was the marzipan decorations. I figured mine would look really ugly in practical since I’m not really good with that kind of thing. Anyways, at the end we got to taste it as usual and I didn’t really like it that much. I liked it, but the rum syrup was wayyyyyy too rummy for me. I don’t like rum to begin with so that might have something to do with it. I also don’t think that rum and chocolate go too well together. It was like eating a rum cake that had a bit of chocolate in it. So here is what Chef made for us in demo:

Chef Nicolas supervised us today in practical. But it didn’t start well for me. When I woke up I wasn’t feeling well (Again! I do have a bit of a cold though, jeez!) and so I ate breakfast thinking maybe I was just really hungry. But that didn’t help much and I still felt really sick when I got to class. We got in and I started unpacking my things and all of a sudden felt really cold and dizzy and things started to go black. Uh oh! This has happened to me before, always when I am sick, even if it is an almost non-existant cold like I have now. A friend got me a glass of water and I started to feel better. Chef asked me if I was okay and told me that if I was sick I should go home because we would be having another open lab soon and I could do the cake then. But I was starting to feel better so I stayed. I worked a bit slower than usual and took my time doing things if I started to feel dizzy. I was able to make it through class without passing out, thank god, and by the end of it I felt almost completely fine.

Anyways, about the actual practical, a lot of people didn’t finish on time because we spent too much time on the marzipan decorations. In demo Chef Herve told us that we needed to have at least 3 marzipan decorations and a plaque.  When it was my turn to present my cake Chef Nicolas said that my buttercream was too heavy, so I needed to whip it more. I knew something wasn’t right about it…He said that my piping was good, it just needs to be a bit smaller (the hole in my cornet was a bit too big).  The taste was fine and the inside was a spiral like it should be. I was surprised he said the taste was good because I put hardly any rum in my syrup at all. He also said that my little spiral christmas tree was cute 🙂 I thought it was too! Here’s what my christmas log looked like.

Not that nice looking I think, but it tastes good! I’m happy with my piping. Practice does help 😉
I wanted to keep it simple because I hate cluttered christmas logs. They just look messy.

It was a fun class, fairly easy, and I’m happy with my end result (except my buttercream). There is no class on monday because of family day, so I have class again on tuesday! We are doing mousse cakes. Yay! I also have my evaluation on tuesday. I’m kind of scared!

Butter used: 390gms
Total: 2600gms