Making a Yule Log
Cake with Pastry Chef
Jean François Houdré, Chef at Sutton Place
Hotel in Newport Beach, CA
Text by Cheri Sicard, Fabulousfoods.com
Photos by Mitch Mandell, Fabulousfoods.com
Now come the fun part. It's time to frost the Yule Log Cake.
Jean François prepared 2 pastry bags filled with buttercream icing, one plain, one hazelnut flavored. You can use any flavor you like, but you will want icing that is somewhat darker in color than the other. He took the white icing and went down the length of the cake piping random little blobs. These will later become knotholes on the log, so don't pipe them in too symetrical a fashion.
He then took the hazelnut icing and piped it in long, flat strips along the length of the cake. When it come to the "knotholes" just pipe the frosting right on top of them, as shown in the photo above.
Jean François then used a small spatula and somewhat smoothed out the icing, eliminating the lines left from the pastry bag tip. He then used a small plastic comb tool that is usually used to texture paint. You can find this tool inexpensivley in hardware stores. The comb is used to create the log's texture by lightly swiriling it through the icing.
To further make the icing resemble wood, Jean François took a smaller comb tool, dipped it in melted chocolate and lightly brushed it randomly over the cake as in the photo above left. The photo on the right illustrates how he created the "knotholes." Jean François warmed the blade of a sharp knife (use hot water but dry the knife first), then simply sliced off the top of the bump that was first piped onto the cake. This left a two-toned knothole on the log.
You could stop right here, transfer the log to a plate and serve. To see how a true artist like Jean François Houdré serves his Yule Log Cake, follow this link.
