Buche de Noel

The buche de Noel aka The Yule Log


The presents I wrapped 'for the moms' and the Buche


Our tree
Still isn't completely decorated. I am wearing my summer art fair purchase


Every year, our postpartum support group,'The Awesome Moms', has our holiday dinner. In January, we will have our 30th anniversary of our first meeting though I knew 2 of the moms before our group started. Between the 5 of us, we have 10 kids and 5 grandkids. Everyone goes all out to make the dinner special. My task is the dessert. Usually Naomi is around to help with the marzipan decorations but with the snow yesterday, I didn't want her driving. The buche de noel is a jellyroll made to look like a log. The hardest part is making the cake base that will hold up to rolling into a log. This year, my base was a flourless torte-big mistake as it was much too fragile for the rolling up part. (I am going back to a genoise base) It broke into several pieces and my jelly roll turned into more like a sandwich which I liberally covered with a fudge frosting that covered up most of the cosmetic defects. I filled it a whipped cream cherry filling. The frosting seemed too thin initially even though I beat it forever but soon as I put it on the cake, it set up like cement. So the cake wasn't as pretty as I hoped it would be but it tasted very good. Chocolate, almonds and cherries-how can you go wrong with that?

So caviar, cocktail shrimp, special salmon, great salads, brie covered with pear conserves, chambord-champagne cocktails, lots of wine, good company, beautiful decorations, carols, candles, presents... a nice night among old friends who have gone through so much together.

Ms. Naomi made an appearance Friday to help with the tree decorating but got bored after a short while. We have lots of ornaments (even more after last night). Some are looking pretty ragged after 33 years. I was in this craft making phase early in our marriage so we have lots of embroidered or needlepoint ornaments. Also we still have the kids' handmade ones. Our tree has scoliosis; the tree looks straight but there is a curve in the main trunk which makes balancing it a challenge. Hopefully it will hold up..I've lost so many ornaments to trees falling over.